Digital Arts Studios (DAS)

29/06/2026

Today CAP textile artists, Heather Douglas and Mayte Ruiz, joined the launch of ImmerseHER, a cross-border immersive arts adventure, exploring Irish cultural heritage, identity, co-creative storytelling, and digital futures. This project is led by Jacqueline Toal of Dundalk Institute of Technology and Wheelworks in Belfast.

If you are a young woman aged 16–25 with a spark for creativity this is a fantastic project for you. The closing date to apply to the project is tomorrow (June 30, 2026). There is no cost to take part in this programme.

A link for further information will be in the comments.

Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council, Halifax Foundation for Northern Ireland,
National Lottery Good Causes,

25/06/2026

As part of our continued series showcasing our member’s work, DAS presents MSC Napoli as part of 2026.

Open Wednesday 24th - Friday 26th June, 12-4pm
+ on Thursday 2nd July, 6-8pm.

This immersive exhibition of photographic imagery, ambisonic audio and salvaged steel captures the monumental aftermath of the MSC Napoli: the vessel’s journey from a fractured wreck to a symbol of industrial redemption. The artworks displayed in this collection document its nine-month dismantling process.

Paul McCambridge is a member of DAS and has been a photographer for over 40 years, covering assignments for national and international newspapers and magazines.

*Please note that our venue is on the first floor with stair access only*

03/06/2026

Late Night Art June // Member Showcase
Between Surface and Shadow by Fionnuala McGowan
Thursday 4th June, 6-8pm.

Between Surface and Shadow is the first installation within Spatial Studies, a long-term project exploring how we perceive, interact with and remember space. The work considers how visual meaning is shaped through fragmentation and shifting conditions of visibility, drawing on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as a framework for thinking about mediated experience; how what we perceive is always shaped by the conditions through which it is filtered.

The installation brings together layered printed surfaces, projection, and suspended material forms to create a spatial environment in which perception is continually interrupted and reconfigured. As viewers move through the space, images appear and dissolve across the suspended surfaces, continually reshaped by position and proximity. Light, shadow, and a subtle ambient soundscape extend this shifting perceptual field.

The work uses imagery derived from screenprints that have been folded, draped, or shaped through movement, projecting this back onto similar surfaces within the installation, dissolving their origins and creating forms that hover between image and object. Screenprinting mesh, normally a tool for producing images, here becomes the surface that receives them, creating a feedback loop in which material, process and image fold into one another.
After the exhibition, fragments of the installation will be preserved alongside photographic documentation, forming the basis of a developing archive for Spatial Studies. Over time, these materials will accumulate into a body of work that can be re-presented in future iterations, extending the installation into a museum-like record shaped by its evolving memory.

10/04/2026

Thanks to everyone who came to the launch of our exhibition last Thursday night during Late Night Art!

Blink: the Digital Arts Studios Annual Review continues at PS2 Gallery until 25th April.
Open Tuesday - Saturday, 12-5pm.

BLINK brings together a curated selection of work developed by artists in residence at Digital Arts Studios over the past year.

ARTISTS:
Alannah Bates .ruth
Catherine Chapman Catherine Rose Chapman
Silvia Koistinen .art
Vanissa Law Vanissa Law
Anna Vidamour ANNA VIDAMOUR

BLINK brings together works that explore moments of perceptual slippage, where images glitch, dissolve, or drift. There are no stable truths here, no fixed positions or clear narratives; yet the body returns as a site of orientation, resisting the speed and fragmentation of contemporary culture.
Collectively, these works speak to a present marked by perceptual instability, where digital mediation, sensory overload, and fractured attention have unsettled how we locate ourselves in the world.
BLINK insists that while meaning may be unstable, it is not absent.

Link in bio 🔝


Arts Council Northern Ireland
Belfast City Council
Late Night Art
PS² Belfast

Photo features the interactive work ‘It’s More Fun To Sink Them’ by Vanissa Law.

13/03/2026

We’re very grateful to receive the recent Digital Evolutions funding for organisations from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for our weekly XR Lab programme.

This reel is a short excerpt of a video included in our XR Lab exhibition last year where members discuss how the Lab has benefited their practice. You can view the full length video on our website.

Drop us a message/email for details on how to become a member and participate in our XR Lab programme.

We look forward to another year of supporting artists to excel in their digital art practices and projects.

The XR Lab project is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Digital Evolution Programme for Organisations which has been match-funded by Future Screens NI. Thanks to National Lottery players and money raised for good causes.


and

04/02/2026

Join us for the first Late Night Art event of 2026
Thursday 5th February, 6-8pm.

For February’s Late Night Art, DAS will present The Approach by Angela Halliday. This is the first in a series of works offering audiences insight into the research and creative practices of the DAS team to foster a spirit of peer exchange. The series will also include work by Richard Davis and Catherine Devlin.

The Approach is a film produced as part of the artist’s ongoing enquiry into pictorial representations of the Irish landscape. It considers how we approach the land both physically as navigators of the natural world, and philosophically as privileged viewers of composed images. It locates these concerns against the backdrop of Rathlin Island, which is home to thousands of breeding seabirds during the summer months. They nest on the west coast where the cliff faces open to the Atlantic Ocean. Filmed on water and land, the spaces presented oppress and overshadow.

The Approach is an interrogation of land, identity, and belonging, resonating with themes of exile, migration, and ecological grief. The film features a monologue written by the artist for this film. The speaker, a child, is both outsider and interloper, simultaneously unwelcome and already present. The child’s voice shifts from questioning to assertion, unable to trust in their interpretation of place.

This screening includes a filmed BSL interpretation by Patrick Sinclair.

19/12/2025

Today we’re having a few drinks for our members in our Production Lab before we close for Christmas.

We have had a very busy year and welcomed many, many new faces to the studios through our extensive programme of residencies, workshops, exhibitions, talks, and even a comedy show.

You can read about all of our activities that took place this year in our festive newsletter (Link-in-bio).

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our supporters, whether a casual visitor, artist-in-residence, DAS member, partner organisation, or even that lone comedian. Your support is vital and very much appreciated!

Have a wonderful holiday and we look forward to 2026!
From Angela, Richard and Catherine

19/12/2025

Here is our final newsletter of 2025, filled with an overview of our activities during the past year.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our supporters, whether a casual visitor, artist-in-residence, DAS member, or partner organisation. Your support is vital and very much appreciated!

Have a wonderful holiday and we look forward to 2026!
From Angela, Richard and Catherine.

Digital Arts Studios will be closed from Monday 22nd December 2025, reopening on Tuesday 6th January 2026.

26/11/2025

This Friday!! You're invited to attend a presentation of work by Aiden Brady & Cailean Finn created for Immersive Arts.

Emancipating XR Practice
Friday 28th November, 12-1pm.

Aiden Brady and Cailean Finn are launching their spatialised referenced website for XR practitioners interested in implementing FLOSS techniques in their work. The website includes reflections on the difficulties working creatively in a space gate kept by big tech companies and figments of visual material documenting the possibilities for open-source practices in the XR landscape.

The event is free and open to the general public.
Email [email protected] if you'd like to attend.

Arts Council of Northern Ireland
Belfast City Council