Dr Helen Pritchard
Staff details
Helen is the head of BSc Digital Arts Computing and a lecturer in Computational and Digital Arts. As an artist and geographer Helen’s interdisciplinary work brings together the fields of Computational Aesthetics, Geography, Design and Feminist TechnoScience. Her practice is both one of writing and making and these two modes mutually inform each other in order to consider the impact of computational practices on our engagement with environments. Central to Helen’s work is the consideration of co-research, participation and environmental practices. Helen’s practice often emerges as workshops, collaborative events and computational art. She is the co-editor of Data Browser 06: Executing Practices, published by Autonomedia. NY (2017).
Since 2013 Helen has been a member of the European Research Council funded project Citizen Sense. Where in collaboration they have developed ground breaking and internationally recognised participatory research on sensing practices. As both researchers and makers Citizen Sense have developed innovative creative methods that use physical computing and sensing technologies to think through and develop new theories of citizen sensing.
As an artist, Helen has shown work internationally including Tate Exchange (UK), FACT (Liverpool), Transmediale (Berlin), DA Fest International festival of Digital Art, (Bulgaria), Spacex (UK), Microwave Festival (Hong Kong), ACA Florida, (USA), Arnolfini Online (UK) and previously held associate lectureships in Art, Technology and Science at The School of Creative Media, City University, Hong Kong; Fine Art (Digital Art and Critical Studies), Plymouth University (where she was a member of Kurator); and Fine Art and Writing, at Dartington College of Arts.
In collaboration with Winnie Soon, Helen won the Silver Prize for the IFVA Interactive Art Asia with “Jsut Code” (2012). And her work 'The Recipe Exchange' (2010-2011), commissioned by Spacex Off-Site program is featured in the illustrated section charting significant projects undertaken by the artists and curators in "Gallery as Community: Art, Education, Politics", Whitechapel Gallery, London in collaboration with Valiz. As a researcher Helen is a member of the international research groups Critical Software Thing, Kurator and CISP.
Research Interests
Feminist TechnoScience, Computational Aesthetics, STS, Creative Methods, DIY, Data Practices, Ethical Hacking, Feminist New Materialisms, More-than-humans, Animals, Ubiquitous Computing, Citizen Sensing, Art Practice.
Helen’s interdisciplinary EPSRC funded research on “Animal Hackers” considers the entanglement of more-than-humans with ubiquitous computing. Examining the practices of environmental data that emerge in the context of communicative capitalism from planetary-scale computational ecologies. In the project Helen focuses on fieldwork with dairy cows monitored by remote cameras in a “big data” environmental observatory, participatory urban sensing by an internet-famous cat and the genetic engineering of Transgenic Fish to monitor water quality.
The diffractive figure of the ‘Animal-Hacker’ is used to consider activities of sensing not as measuring or writing the other, but instead as co-writing with articulate nonhumans. The project focuses on how the animal is inscripted with, and by, new technology and the theoretical perspectives that we need in order to take seriously the participation of nonhuman animals in computational systems. Developing a set of practices for “postnatural computing”.
During this project Helen undertook visiting research at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.
Publications
Edited Book
Pritchard, Helen; Snodgrass, Eric and Tyżlik-Carver, Magda, eds. 2018. Data Browser 06: Executing Practices. Open Humanities Press. ISBN 978-1-78542-057-3
Book Section
Gabrys, Jennifer and Pritchard, Helen. 2018. Sensing Practices. In: Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, eds. Posthuman Glossary. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781350030244
Pritchard, Helen; Snodgrass, Eric and Tyżlik-Carver, Magda. 2018. Executing Practices. In: Helen Pritchard; Eric Snodgrass and Magda Tyżlik-Carver, eds. Data Browser 06: Executing Practices. (6) Open Humanities Press, pp. 9-24. ISBN 9781785420566
Pritchard, Helen. 2018. Critter Compiler. In: Helen Pritchard; Eric Snodgrass and Magda Tyżlik-Carver, eds. Data Browser 06: Executing Practices. (6) Open Humanities Press, pp. 237-251. ISBN 9781785420566
Gabrys, Jennifer and Pritchard, Helen. 2017. Just Good Enough Data and Citizen Sensing. In: Claudia Göbel; Gaia Agnello and Katrin Vohland, eds. European Stakeholder Round Table on Citizen and DIY Science and Responsible Research and Innovation. Doing-it-Together Science Report. Berlin: European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), pp. 7-8.
Gabrys, Jennifer. 2017. Afterword: Reverse Executions in the Internet of Things. In: Helen Pritchard; Eric Snodgrass and Magda Tyzlik-Carver, eds. Executing Practices. Brooklyn: Autonomedia. ISBN 9781570273216
Prophet, Jane and Pritchard, Helen. 2016. UBIQUITOUS–ALIFE IN TECHNOSPHERE 2.0 The Design, Individuation, and Entanglement of Ubicomp Apps in Urban South East Asia. In: Ulrik Ekman; Jay David Bolter; Lily Díaz; Morten Søndergaard and Maria Engberg, eds. Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity and Culture. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 256-268. ISBN 978-0415743822
Gabrys, Jennifer; Pritchard, Helen; Calvillo, Nerea; Keene, Tom and Shapiro, Nick. 2016. Becoming Civic: Fracking, Air Pollution and Environmental Sensing Technologies. In: Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis, eds. Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 435-440. ISBN 0262034271
Pritchard, Helen. 2013. 'Thinking with the Animal Hacker, articulation in ecologies of earth observation. In: C Anderson and G Cox, eds. A Peer Reviewed Journal about Back When Pluto Was a Planet, The Reinvention of Research as Participatory Practice. Berlin/ Aarhus: transmediale/darc, aarhus university.
Pritchard, Helen. 2012. The Recipe Exchange. In: Marijke Steedman, ed. Gallery as Community: Art, Education, Politics. London: Whitechapel Gallery. ISBN 978-0854881956
Pritchard, Helen. 2008. The Ingredients of Social Exchange. In: Joëlle Bitton; Andreia Cavaco; Lalya Gaye and Ben Jones, eds. United We Act. A Scoping Study And A Symposium On Connected Communities. lulu.com. ISBN 978-1470987343
Article
Pritchard, Helen; Gabrys, Jennifer and Houston, Lara. 2018. Re-Calibrating DIY: Testing Participation across Digital Sensors, Fry Pans and Environmental Media. New Media & Society, 20(12), pp. 4533-4552. ISSN 1461-4448
Pritchard, Helen; Rocha, Jara and Snelting, Femke. 2018. Ultrasonic dreams of aclinical renderings. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology(13),
Gabrys, Jennifer and Pritchard, Helen. 2018. Just Good Enough Data and Environmental Sensing: Moving Beyond Regulatory Benchmarks toward Citizen Action. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, 13, pp. 4-14.
Pritchard, Helen and Gabrys, Jennifer. 2016. From Citizen Sensing to Collective Monitoring: Working through the Perceptive and Affective Problematics of Environmental Pollution. Geohumanities, 2(2), pp. 354-371. ISSN 2373-566X
Gabrys, Jennifer; Pritchard, Helen and Barratt, Benjamin. 2016. Just Good Enough Data: Figuring Data Citizenships through Air Pollution Sensing and Data Stories. Big Data & Society, 3(2), pp. 1-14. ISSN 2053-9517
Soon, Winnie and Pritchard, Helen. 2016. Thousands of other questions. The Electronic Literature Collection VOLUME THREE, 3,
Prophet, Jane and Pritchard, Helen. 2015. Performative Apparatus and Diffractive Practices: An Account of Artificial Life Art. Artificial Life, 21(3), pp. 332-343. ISSN 1064-5462
Prophet, Jane and Pritchard, Helen. 2015. Diffractive Art Practices: Computation and the Messy Entanglements between Mainstream Contemporary Art, and New Media Art. artnodes, 15,
Pritchard, Helen and Soon, Winnie. 2013. Performativity of 'Jsut Code'. Leonardo Electronic Almanac,
Conference or Workshop Item
Prophet, Jane and Pritchard, Helen. 2015. 'SE Asian Ubicomp and ALife: Roaming and Homing with TechnoSphere 2.0 Computational Companions'. In: Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) CHI conference. Seoul, Korea, Republic of.
Gabrys, Jennifer and Pritchard, Helen. 2015. 'Next-Generation Environmental Sensing: Moving Beyond Regulatory Benchmarks for Citizen-Gathered Data'. In: Environmental Infrastructures and Platforms 2015 - Infrastructures and Platforms for Environmental Crowd Sensing and Big Data. Barcelona, Spain 28 - 30 Oct. 2015.
Jefferies, Janis K.; Bunt, Brogan; Salter, Chris; Pritchard, Helen and Prophet, Jane. 2013. 'Panel 1: Media Art, Mediation and Contemporary Art with Brogan Bunt (University of Wollongong), Chris Salter (Concordia University), Helen Pritchard and Jane Prophet (City Arts University, Hong Kong).'. In: ISEA Sydney. Sydney, Australia.
Pritchard, Helen. 2012. 'When an animal enters into things: Reconceptualizing the collective in environmental data practice'. In: Back When Pluto Was a Planet, The Reinvention of Research as Participatory Practice Workshop & Publication. UNDEFINED.
Pritchard, Helen and Soon, Winnie. 2010. '‘If I Wrote you a Love Letter Would You Write Back? and thousands of other questions’'. In: ENIGMA exhibition based on Alan Turing, Microwave International Media Festival 2012. Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Art Object
Pritchard, Helen. 2016. Critter Compiler.
Composition
Pritchard, Helen. 2010. Spirit Rally 3.
Digital
Pritchard, Helen and Soon, Winnie. 2012. 'Jsut Code.
Pritchard, Helen and Soon, Winnie. 2012. 'Jsut Code'.
Project
Pritchard, Helen and Soon, Winnie. 2015. The Likes of Brother Cream Cat.
Pritchard, Helen and Abramovic, Marina. 2010. 'Performance Market at The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow'.
Report
Pritchard, Helen. 2010. The Recipe Exchange, • Spacex Off¬Site Programme. Other. UNSPECIFIED.
Show/Exhibition
Pritchard, Helen and Soon, Winnie. 2019. Seeding Imaginaries. In: "**** Civic Art", Euston, United Kingdom, 2019 - 2039.
Gabrys, Jennifer; Pritchard, Helen and Houston, Lara. 2017. Urban Sensing. In: "Citizen Sense (Jennifer Gabrys, Helen Pritchard and Lara Houston). "Urban Sensing". As part of the exhibition and events for "The New Observatory", organised by Sam Skinner and Hannah Redler (ODI), (2017)", FACT, Liverpool, United Kingdom, 22 June - 1 October 2017.
Pritchard, Helen. 2016. Critter Compiler Prototype. In: "*.exe(Ver2.0). Executions: Conversations on code, politics and practice", Medea @ Niagara, Sweden, 28 April – 3 May 2016.
Pritchard, Helen and Soon, Winnie. 2016. Jsut Code Archive. In: "No References: A Revisit of Hong Kong Video and Media Art from 1985", Cattle Depot Artist Village, Hong Kong, 19 May - 15 June.
