S+T+ARTS4WaterII
(2024 - 2025)
STARTS4waterII was the second edition of the S+T+ARTS Residency Programme, which was dedicated to Water Sustainability and innovation at the nexus of Science, Technology, and the arts. This time, the programme specifically focused on the environmental challenges of ports, port cities, coastal areas, and waterways. Through nine-month residencies, STARTS4waterII enhanced collaborative artistic research, creation, and innovation in different port cities and their related ecosystems and industries across eight countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Ireland, Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia.
Kat Austen, Lauren Moffatt and Siobhán McDonald were the Beta Festival selected artists in residence in Galway, Belfast and Dublin port. The projects explored and reflected on ports as interdisciplinary liminal spaces for reimagining our entanglements with water, technology, and ecology.
Together, these works transform ports and oceans into sites of imagination and repair, using art and technology to question how we might live with, listen to, and learn from water in an age of crisis and change
These works were developed within the S+T+ARTS framework programme delivered by ADAPT Centre at Dublin City University and Beta Festival with the support from Belfast Harbour, Maritime Mile, Belfast City Council, Digital Arts Studios (DAS) Belfast, Port of Galway, Galway Culture Company, Galway City Council, Culture Works, iii instrumentinventors.org, Waves of Change (ATU / Marine Institute), Dublin Port, Dublin City Council, Smart Dublin, Waterways Ireland, Irish Maritime Development Office and the S+T+ARTS programme of the European Union.
Meet the artists
Kat Austen
Kat Austen’s ~~ Not Breaking ~~ ~~ This Wave Drowns Hate ~~ listens to the ocean through microplastics and community-created AI, offering visions of symbiotic futures.
Lauren Moffatt
Lauren Moffatt’s Chorcorallium immerses visitors in speculative reef ecologies where industrial debris becomes the foundation for imagined coral life, shaped by collective voices and artificial intelligence.
Siobhán McDonald
Siobhán McDonald’s SHAPESHIFTER traces Dublin Port’s shifting identities, from wetlands to rising seas, layering scientific data with film, painting, and sculpture to reveal unseen histories and fragile futures.
