Fiona McDonald
Fiona McDonald
Bio: Fiona Mc Donald is a Dublin based interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of art, ecology, and technology. She holds a BSc in Biological Chemistry from the University of Ulster, a BA and MA in Fine Art from NCAD, and an MSc in Multimedia Systems from TCD. Her current research explores carbon cycles and more-than-human temporalities through Ireland’s restored peatlands recovering from years of peat extraction. Working across sculpture, installation, print, hardware, and code, her small-file methodology resists speed and scale, attuning instead to ecological time: slowness as resistance, slowness as care.
She is a current Artist in at UCD Parity Studios and recipient of Arts Council of Ireland Project Award 2024 and Bursary Award 2025. Her current research project Inhale Exhale - Ecologies That Refuse to Behave (2026) was awarded an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2026 in the Interactive Art+ Category.
Artwork Description and Title of Work: Inhale Exhale - Cloud Chambers (868MHz Transmitter)
The work centres on custom built floating and ground greenhouse gas (GHG) chambers that measure CO₂ flux from still water and peatland ecologies on a restored cutaway bog, transmitting live environmental data via a low-power LoRa network. The chambers are creative adaptations of the closed chamber method used by peatland restoration practitioners to monitor greenhouse gas exchange.
The installation includes a transparent automated chamber housing a living sphagnum moss ecosystem beneath an ultraviolet grow light, actively sequestering carbon dioxide, alongside receivers and a filmed performance. In the film, performers unfold white, transparent black and opaque black cloths over a chamber, echoing climate-science protocols used to simulate light conditions and calculate net ecosystem carbon balance. Gestures of calibration, measurement and care become choreography.
Environmental data from the chamber is transmitted to receiver modules that translate CO₂ flux into light, pulse, number and scrolling text.
The work draws on the embodied routines of environmental measurement observed during years of field research with peatland restoration practitioners. Simultaneously signal carriers, custodians and talisman-bearers, the performers inhabit an enigmatic past-future where sensing infrastructures, ecological restoration and ritual action converge.
The antenna appears not simply as a communications technology but as a device for listening to distant signals and unseen forces. At once scientific instrument, sculptural form and ritual object, it operates as a contemporary form of magic, connecting bodies, machines, landscapes and atmospheric processes. Through low-power infrastructures, durational processes and embodied acts of attention, the work creates space for ecological care and alternative ways of relating to the more-than-human world.
Website: https://www.fionamcdonald.digital/ Instagram: @mcdonafiona
Featured Events
Artwork
