Nathan Jones
Senior Lecturer in Fine Art: Digital MediaResearch Overview
I am an artistic research practitioner whose work explores how emerging technologies reshape language, publishing, heritage, and cultural experience. My practice spans artificial intelligence, immersive and interactive media, and post-digital publishing, with a focus on how art generates new modes of knowledge and fosters resilience in times of systemic change. I have published and presented on the conditions for language and literature in relation to AI, glitch practices, and distributed critique, while also developing projects that investigate security, resilience, and cultural innovation through artistic methods. Exhibited works range from experimental uses of speed readers and optical character recognition to recursive neural networks, VR environments, and hybrid archival machines such as microfiche readers. Current initiatives include research into virtual heritage and digital twins of cave art sites, interdisciplinary labs rethinking security through immersive art, and cross-sector cultural strategies that position art as a driver of civic and ecological transformation.
Current Research
My current research concerns include:
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Unsecurities Lab (Security Lancaster): Advancing an art-led research environment that uses immersive media, synthetic dialogue, and scenario-building in the Data Immersion Suite to rethink security, AI, and environmental futures—producing methods, reports, and policy provocations.
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Morecambe Bay Triennial (MBT): Co-developing a research-led coastal triennial as a living lab for artists, communities, and academics to test place-based cultural infrastructure.
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Distributed Critique: Formalising critical writing methods that match the scale and complexity of networked arts and platforms, building on collaborations with Abandon Normal Devices.
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AI × Language: Working with computing and linguistics scholars to analyse AI textual synthesis as a mode of speculative foresight and cultural diagnostics.
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Reading Technologies & Publishing: Through Torque Editions, prototyping post-digital reading, exhibition, and publishing formats that interrogate how audiences encounter knowledge now.
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Virtual Heritage & VR Twins: Designing high-fidelity, research-ready digital twins of cave art sites to study cultural memory, interpretation, and resilience in immersive environments.
Current Teaching
I teach a range of digital skills, concepts, theories, and practices on our fine art course.
LICA's Fine Art Studio Practice modules, as one of the Digital/Performance team.
I wrote and developed my department's 101 introduction to study skills and 20-21st century cultural ideas course, called Fundamentals of Arts and Design, I co-wrote the corresponding art theories course for second years.
Virtual Library of Great Rock Art Sites: Exploring Heritage through Digital Twins
01/05/2025 → 31/10/2025
Research
IAA: Environmental Futures and Culture in Morecambe Bay: Accelerating LICAs Artistic Research Towards Morecambe Bay Triennial
10/01/2025 → 30/09/2025
Research
MBC Curriculum Co-Design Project
02/10/2023 → 31/07/2024
Research
Distributed Critique: working with specialist audiences for contemporary art
01/04/2019 → 31/03/2022
Research
Glitch Poetics: critical sensory realisms in contemporary language practice
30/09/2015 → 31/05/2018
Research
Torque Editions
17/01/2014 → …
Research
Unsecurities Lab 2
Symposium
Cultivating Data Natures
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Unsecurities Lab
Symposium
Cultivate: Culture Innovation in Morecambe Bay
Oral presentation
Contemporary Art as a Research Environment for the Fifth Industrial Revolution
Invited talk
Abandon Normal Devices (External organisation)
Membership of board
Texts That Could Be Otherwise: Reading the Social Effect of Contingency in Experiential Literature through GPT-3 Versions
Oral presentation
Things That Could Be Otherwise: Esoteric Reading with AI in the Post Digital Library
Invited talk
Using art to think about the hybrid library
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
BiblioTech: the postdigital library
Invited talk
Goldsmiths Press (Publisher)
Editorial activity
BiblioTech: an exhibition about libraries reading and publishing
Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition
BiblioTech: an exhibition about libraries reading and publishing
Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition
Distributed Critique, Weather Engines
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Rethinking Symposia
Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition
Hard to Grasp: Finding our Time in Critical New Media Art
Invited talk
Rethinking Symposia
Consultancy
AI and the Headline Archive
Invited talk
Electronic Literature Organisation
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain
Invited talk
Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain
Invited talk
Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain
Invited talk
Glitch Poetics
Oral presentation
A Crack in the Voice
Invited talk
Machine Research
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Glitch: The Contemporary Aesthetic
Invited talk
A Crack in the Voice
Oral presentation
Glitch Poetics: codecs and contemporary poetry
Invited talk
Absorbing Text
Invited talk
Syndrome
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Deans Award for Outstanding Contribution to Engagement
Prize (including medals and awards)
- Institute for Social Futures Fellow
- ISF Fellows 2019/20
- Morecambe Bay Curriculum
- Practices