Julie Freeman
Founder / Artist
Julie works with natural systems and emergent technologies. Her large scale installations and online artworks have, since the early 1990s, pioneered her conceptual and critical approach to working with real-time data as a living and malleable art material.
Often translating time-based 'big' data from natural sources into kinetic sculptures, physical objects, images, sound compositions and animations, her work explores the relationship between science, technology and the living world–– questioning the use of networked technology in how we connect to nature.
Julie develops projects collaboratively and experimentally with organisations, scientists and curators to curate, develop and produce artwork and exhibitions around the concept of data, and the impact it has on us and the environment.
Over the past 20 years, her work has been shown at leading institutions including; the V&A, London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Modern Art Oxford The Lowry, and the Science Museum, as well as internationally including the Dunkerque Trienniale and ZKM.
Julie has won awards from the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council, and the EPSRC, and fellowships from Nesta and TED . She holds a PhD from Queen Mary University of London for a thesis entitled Defining Data as an Art Material , and established the Open Data Institute 's art programme 'Data as Culture ' in 2012. Julie is co-founder of Fine Acts which amplifies human rights and environmental messages through art and creative campaigns. She runs Translating Nature, a digital and data art studio in Margate, UK.