About
Karen ann Donnachie and Andy Simionato have worked together in the expanded fields of computational art, design, and post-digital publishing since the 1990s. Working across human and nonhuman collaborative systems, they make electronic art, robotic drawing machines, nonhuman collage, and The Library of Nonhuman Books.
Possibly best known across Europe for their award-winning net-art project “This is a Magazine” (2002->ongoing), the duo’s work tests emerging and networked technologies across fashion, design, literature and art. Their research-led practice and scholarship draws from more than 30 years of multidisciplinary experience across theatre and Internet art in the 1990s, fashion photography & design in Milan through the 2000s, to generative art and robotic design projects since the 2010s.
Karen ann & Andy both hold PhDs in Art and Design; are curators of the LESS Festival of Contemporary Collage (DK); design editors of Art + Australia; and LESS journal. They have won the highest international awards and critical recognition in their fields; and their artworks and designs are exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally. Karen ann & Andy’s most recent research focuses on the human-nonhuman collaborative practices made possible by Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, embodied in autonomous-art-systems that can generate new works in the mediums of experimental publication, design and photography.
Possibly best known across Europe for their award-winning net-art project “This is a Magazine” (2002->ongoing), the duo’s work tests emerging and networked technologies across fashion, design, literature and art. Their research-led practice and scholarship draws from more than 30 years of multidisciplinary experience across theatre and Internet art in the 1990s, fashion photography & design in Milan through the 2000s, to generative art and robotic design projects since the 2010s.
Karen ann & Andy both hold PhDs in Art and Design; are curators of the LESS Festival of Contemporary Collage (DK); design editors of Art + Australia; and LESS journal. They have won the highest international awards and critical recognition in their fields; and their artworks and designs are exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally. Karen ann & Andy’s most recent research focuses on the human-nonhuman collaborative practices made possible by Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, embodied in autonomous-art-systems that can generate new works in the mediums of experimental publication, design and photography.
CV
KAREN ANN DONNACHIE
Melbourne, Australia
karenanndonnachie@gmail.com
karenanndonnachie.com
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2024 — [Forthcoming] Tokyo TDC 2024 Prizewinners’ Exhibition, Ginza Graphic Gallery, Tokyo (JP)
2023 — [Current] “Storytime: Lesemachine” in The Ugly Duckling of Publishing: A-pod, National Library of Germany, Museum of Books and Writing, Leipzig, DE (November 2023 - February 2024)
2023 — “A Jagged Orbit” in xCoaX2023 , Weimar, DE
2023 — “Holes in Between” in Das Kapital, Art Bank Project, Melbourne, Aust
2023 — “AI Seems to be a Verb” in Temporary Position, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Aust
2022 — “PlyFace” in Lonely Rocks, Miami Art Week, USA; FEED Media Art Center, Erie, PA, USA
2022 — [SOLO] “The Cloud of Unknowing,”. Black Box Video space, Mars Gallery, Melbourne, Aust
2022 — “Le Traité des Amateurs” in ELO022, Como, Italy [Juried exhibition]
2022 — “Things Have Forgotten What the Shapes are For” in xCoax2022, Coimbra, Portugal [Juried exhibition]
2022 — “The Cloud of Unknowing: A Nonhuman Reading” , in ANAT SpectraVision: Multiplicity: Machines like them Cells like us, ANATSpectra 2022, Australia [Juried exhibition]
2021 — [CURATOR] “LESS Festival of Collage 2021: The Collage Garden”, Viborg, DK; VR [Oculus experience]
2021 — “Regions of Interest” in Computer Vision Art Gallery, [Juried exhibition] launched in Workshop on Ethical Considerations in Creative Applications of Computer Vision, at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2021.
2021 — “AI Seems to be a Verb” in Posthuman Literature, [Juried exhibition] Bergen, Norway
2021 — “This Indignant Page” in Generative Unfoldings, MIT CAST [commissioned, juried exhibition], MIT University Cambridge Mass, USA
2020 — “Delayed Rays of a Star” in LESS Festival of Contemporary Collage (Selected Artist), Viborg, Denmark
2020 — “The Library of Nonhuman Books” in TDC2020 Prizewinners exhibition, Tokyo Type Directors Club. Ginza Gallery Tokyo, Japan.
2020 — “Regions of Interest” in NeurIPS Creativity Workshop Showcase, [Juried exhibition] in Thirty-fourth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 6 -12 December.
2019 — Machine Learning for Creativity and Design, [Juried exhibition] NeurIPS, Vancouver Canada
2019 — Computer Vision Art Gallery, [Juried exhibition] Second Workshop on Computer Vision for Fashion, Art and Design, at the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), Seoul, South Korea
2019 — “To Hide a Leaf” in ELO 2019, [Juried exhibition] UCC Cork, Ireland.
2019 — XCoax 2019, [Juried exhibition & conference] Careof Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, Italy.
2019 — Calculated Chance, Société Electrique, Brussels, Belgium.
2019 — TDC2019 Prizewinners exhibition, Tokyo Type Directors Club. Ginza Gallery Tokyo, Japan.
2017 — [SOLO] Live Draw, Juried Exhibition-in-residence, Edicola Radetzky Art Space, Milan, Italy.
2017 — Libro Ogetto: Book Object [18—23 April], Triennale Design Museum; [November] National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, Italy.
2017 — TDC2017, Tokyo Type Directors Club exhibition. DDD Kyoto; Ginza Gallery Tokyo, Japan.
2016 — Words Beyond Grammar, Spectrum Project Space, Mt Lawley, Western Australia.
2016 — TDC2016, Tokyo Type Directors Club exhibition. DDD Gallery, Kyoto; Ginza Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
2015 — Book Ghosting, pop-up exhibition, Milan Monumental Cemetery. In Careof Artist-in-Residence program, Milan, Italy.
2015 — “The Human Use of the Human Face,” in Soda15, John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Australia.
2015 — “athrowofthedicewillneverabolishchance.com,” [Juried exhibition] Lydgaleriet, Bergen, Norway. In Hybridity and Synaethesia, ELO2015 Electronic Literature Festival, 2015.
2014 — Tabularium, Slopesproject, Melbourne, Australia. Curated by Alana Kuschnir.
2014 — Art and Book / Against the Odds, Dunedin School of Art, New Zealand.
2012 — Milan Design Triennial, TDM5: Grafica Italiana, [Juried exhibition] Triennale Design Museum, Milan, Italy. Curated by Giorgio Camuffo.
2012 — “Dis[place]ment: A Woman’s Perspective” in An Interior Affair: A State Of Becoming. Form Gallery, Perth, Australia. Curated by Marina Lommerse, Jane Lawrence, Sven Mehzoud and Stuart Foster.
2011 — [SOLO] Only the Good/Bad News, Kunstverein Neuhausen (KVN), Stuttgart, Germany. Curated by Susan Jakob.
2000-10 [Various] Avecom Real, NL; Colophon Festival, LX; CMYK Festival, ES; Gertrude Gallery, AU; Stuttgarter Filmwinter, DE; Senko Gallery, DK; Care/Of, IT; Netmage Festival, IT; Semi-Permanent, AU; Hijacked, AU;
GRANTS & AWARDS
2024 — Winner Grand Prize Tokyo Type Directors Club Award 2024
2023 — [Lead Researchers] CAIDE Seed Funding for Ethics in AI, with Art+Australia, University of Melbourne
2020 — Winner, Tokyo Type Directors Club Prize 2020, for “The Library of Nonhuman Books.” Tokyo, JP.
2020 — Winner, Robert Coover Prize 2020, for Electronic Literature from Electronic Literature Organization.
2020 — Winner, Cornish Family Prize for Art & Design Publishing, Melbourne, Australia.
2020 — [Chief Investigators] International Contract Research Funding, Blender Project, Boiler Corporation (Barcelona; Milan), facilitated by RMIT Europe.
2019 — Winner, Tokyo Type Directors Club Prize 2019, for “The Trumpet of the Swan.” Tokyo, JP
2019 — Merit award, AGDA Award for Graphic Design
2019 — Longlisted, Lumen Prize 2019, digital art prize, UK
2017 — Prize nominee “athrowofthedicewillneverabolishchance.com” - Tokyo Type Directors Club Prize 2017, JP
2016 — Winner Greg Crombie Postgraduate Publication/Creative Work of the Year Award, Humanities Research Award, 2016. Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University.
2015 — Recipient ArtFlight Grant, Department of Culture and the Arts (DCA) Western Australia, for Artist-in-residency “Book-Ghosting” at Careof, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, Italy.
2014 — Recipient Major Creative Work of the Year 2014, Humanities Research Award, Curtin University.
2014 — Erin Coates: Kinesphere [with PICA, Perth] funded by Catalyst: Katherine Hannay Visual Arts Grant.
2012 — Recipient APA & Curtin University Postgraduate Research Scholarship, Curtin University (2012-2015)
2011 — Recipient ArtFlight Grant, Department of Culture and the Arts (DCA) Western Australia to attend opening of Only The Good solo show in Stuttgart, Germany.
2006 — Winner Gold Ink Award, [Printing Impressions NY, USA], for Who I Think I am book
2003 — Winner Stuttgarter Filmwinter Award for New Media, Germany.
AUTHORED PUBLICATIONS
2024 — [Forthcoming]Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “Machine as Metaphor as Machine: Automatic-art-systems and the Cybernetic Feedback Loop” In Machine Metaphor, Edited by Anthony Curran. Vernon Press, UK..
2024 — [Forthcoming]Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “One Hundred Thousand Billion Books” In Artists Print on Demand Publishing Catalog, Edited by Annette Gilbert. Spector Books; National Library of Germany.
2023 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “A Jagged Orbit” In xCoAx 2023 Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X
2022 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “Monolith” in Slanted Yearbook of Type 2022-23, Slanted Publishers, Germany. 15-17 ISBN 978-3-948440-41-1
2022 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “The App is not the Territory” In Art and Australia, Vol 57 Issue 2, https://artandaustralia.com/57_2/p1/the-app-is-not-the-territory
2022 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “Things Have Forgotten What the Shapes are For” In xCoAx 2022 Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X ISBN:978-989-9049-33-8 370-373
2020 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “To Hide a Leaf” in EBR: Electronic Book Review
2020 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “Perception” (an AI reading of MD Vernon’s The Psychology of perception), [Atomic Activity Books; Melbourne]
2020 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “Friday Essay: a real life experiment illuminates the future of books” in The Conversation, 28 February, 2020.
2019 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “The Library of Nonhuman Books” in xCoax2019: Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, Milan, Italy, pp297-301
2018 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “Mallarmé’s Self-replicating Machine.” In MatLit: Materialities of Literature [Coimbra University, Portugal] Edited by Sandy Baldwin & Rui Torres.
2018 — Donnachie, Karen ann and Simionato, Andy. “Trumpet of the Swan.” In MatLit. Edited by Sandy Baldwin & Rui Torres
2017 — Donnachie, Karen ann, “Selfies, #Me: Glimpses Of Authenticity In The Narcissus’ Pool Of The Networked Amateur Self-portrait,” in Rites of Spring, edited by Julie Lunn, (Bentley, Australia: Black Swan Press) 61-76. ISBN-9780995441538 (ebook)
2017 — Crouch, Christopher. Lenin in Perth. Edited by K.A. Donnachie & A. Simionato. Melbourne, Australia: Atomic Activity Books, 2017.
2015 — Donnachie, Karen ann, “Selfies, #Me: Glimpses of Authenticity,” [also with German translation “Selfies, #ich: Augenblicke der Authentizität”] in Ego Update, edited by A. Bieber, S. Michalskaja, S. Zarinbal, (Düsseldorf: NRW Forum; Köln : Buchhandlung Walther König, distributor, 2015) 50-78. ISBN 978-3-86335-831-0
2015 — Tosic, Nikola. Heaven: 52 Poems by Nikola Tosic. Edited by K.A. Donnachie, R. Rozendaal and A. Simionato. Perth, Australia: Atomic Activity Books, 2015. ISBN-9780987191021
2014 — Coates, Erin. Erin Coates: Kinesphere. Edited by K.A. Donnachie, L. Robb and A. Simionato. Perth, Australia: PICA Press & Atomic Activity Books, 2014. ISBN- 9780987191014
2013 — Donnachie, Karen ann, and Andy Simionato. Handbook for the Graphic Arts [in Italian, English, French]. 3rd (revised) edition. Milan, Italy: NavaPress, 2013. ISBN-8890239700
2013 — Nava Printers in Milan. (Nava Stampatori a Milano). [in Italian, English, French].
Edited by K. A. Donnachie, M. Itoli, A. Simionato and C. Zucchetti. Milan, Italy: NavaPress, 2013. ISBN-9788890239731
2013 — Paesmans, Dirk (JoDi). Blue Cloud: Live Transmission. Edited by K. A. Donnachie and
A. Simionato. Perth, Australia: Atomic Activity Books, 2013. ISBN-9788890307850
2011 — Rennekamp, Billy. Dim Tricks. Edited by K.A. Donnachie and A. Simionato. Perth, Australia: Atomic Activity Books, 2011. ISBN-9780987191007
2010 — Unbound Magazine #1. Edited by K.A. Donnachie and A. Simionato. Milan, Italy: Navapress, 2010.
2009 — Donnachie, Karen ann, and Andy Simionato. Pink Laser Beam. Milan, Italy: NavaPress, 2009. ISBN-9788890307881
2009 — Fumai, Chiara. The Girl with the Blanket. Edited by K.A. Donnachie and A. Simionato. Milan, Italy: Atomic Activity Books, 2009. ISBN-9788890307836
2009 — Rozendaal, Rafaël. Big Long Now. Edited by K.A. Donnachie and A. Simionato. Milan, Italy: Atomic Activity Books, 2009. ISBN-9788890307829
2009 — Spampinato, Francesco. Experiencing Hypnotism. Edited by K.A. Donnachie and A. Simionato. Milan, Italy: Atomic Activity Books, 2009. ISBN-9788890307812
2007 — Donnachie, Karen ann, and Andy Simionato. Who I Think I Am. Milan, Italy: NavaPress, 2007. ISBN-9788890307874
2006 — Donnachie, Karen ann, and Andy Simionato. Everything Will Be Ok. Milan, Italy: NavaPress. ISBN-9788890307867
2006 — Donnachie, K.A., A. Simionato, J. Käferstein, and et al., eds. Positionen Architektur: Atlas. Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Hochschule Liechtenstein
2006 — Donnachie, K.A., A. Simionato, and M. Zanazzo. Handbook for the Graphic Arts.1st & 2nd (revised) ed. Milan, Italy: NavaPress. Technical Handbook. ISBN-9788890239700
2005 — Everything Will Be OK. Edited by K.A. Donnachie and A. Simionato. PAL DVD, Milan, Italy: This is a Magazine, 2005. ISSN-17214904
2004 — Donnachie, Karen ann, and Andy Simionato. Chaos Happens. Milan, Italy: NavaPress.ISBN9788890307850
2003 — Donnachie, Karen ann, and Andy Simionato. Fashion = Fiction. Milan, Italy: NavaPress, ISBN-9788890307843
2002 — Donnachie, Karen ann, and Andy Simionato. Love, the Universe & Everything. Milan, Italy: This is a Magazine. ISBN-9788890307805
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