Erin Robinson

University of York

Erin Robinson is a multimedia artist, experimental musician and PhD Researcher from London. Her work primarily involves the design of interactive installations, where she takes a participatory approach to evolving visual-scapes, but also takes form in fixed media, sound art, free improvisation, live visuals and immersive experiences. 

Her work critically engages with the concepts of posthumanism and postmodernism, exploring notions of authenticity and existence in the digital anthropocene by blurring lines between organic and non-organic entities, reality and virtuality, self and otherness. She is a founding member of SubPhonics, an experimental music and sound art collective based in London. Recent works include ‘Flora_Synthetica’, shown at Peckham Digital 2024, and ‘Pluriversal Perspectives: Moss’, shown at the South London Botanical Institute and Conference for Designing Interactive Systems (Copenhagen) 2024.

A description of Erin's research:

"My research adopts a practice-based approach to exploring participant-contributed materials, a technique positioned at the intersection of participatory and new media arts. This interactive technique enables participants to contribute aesthetic and semiotic materials to new media artworks through open forms of interaction, including but not limited to, text input, drawing, and video feed. Although both participatory and new media artistic practices involve audience engagement, traditional interactive media often impose restrictive computational frameworks. 

In contrast, participatory practices, typically conducted in person, allow participants greater freedom, resulting in deeper engagement and more diverse, unexpected outcomes that reflect the audience's perspectives and behaviours. This research underscores the potential of digital artworks to provide more expansive and identity-reflecting experiences by incorporating participant-contributed materials. By using strengths of participatory practices, digital artworks can achieve a richer and more personalised form of interaction, and meaningful engagement with audiences."