Irem is a London-based artist whose interactive installations and moving image works explore intelligence across biological and artificial systems. By creating encounters with machines and drawing on multi-species evolutionary history, her work opens up new ways of being with the non-human minds that have always surrounded us, and those now rapidly emerging.
This inquiry began with Luna, a robotic installation that uses eye tracking to follow the viewer's gaze. When audiences anthropomorphised the machine, forming intimate bonds with what they knew to be artificial, the work exposed the deep frameworks that shape how we perceive, relate, and make meaning, patterns that become visible when reflected back through machines.
Recent work continues this investigation across different cognitive processes and timescales. Priors explores what happens when humans and machines co-perceive, co-sensing and making meaning together in real time. Inference lets people interact with a machine's memory, making visible the processes of recall and association that shape both artificial and biological thought. Cambrian Stream traces intelligence back to its evolutionary origins, creating a simulation that celebrates the diverse manifestations of mind across millions of years and the co-evolutionary processes that shaped them.
Her work has been exhibited at the Barbican Centre, Ars Electronica, Istanbul Airport, Scorpios Mykonos (with HOFA Gallery), and Phillips London, among others. She holds an MA specialising in Robotics and Human-Computer Interaction from UCL's Bartlett School of Architecture, where she received the Best Thesis Prize, and a BA with honours in Art History and Architecture from Tufts University. Her research has been published with SIGGRAPH and IEEE ICRA.
Selected Exhibitions, Commissions & Awards
Inference, Art of Ritual presented by AMEX, Scorpios, Bodrum, 2025
Ecologies of Vision II, Esas Holding, Istanbul, 2025
Digital Art Awards by HOFA with PhillipsX, London, 2025
Ecologies of Vision, Istinye Park Art Collection, Istanbul, 2025
Frontiers, in collaboration with Lannka, curated by HOFA, and Scorpios Mykonos
Eskiden Piksele, Samsun, Turkey, 2024
Istanbul Digital Arts Festival, AKM, 2023
SOFT Publication, 2022
SIGGRAPH ACM, 2021
Bang Prix. 2020 Residency Programme
Ugly Duck, Anamorphic Waves, 2019
Grow Hackney, Sense 4: Perception, 2019
Here East UCL, Exquisite Instruments, 2019
Selected Talks and Writings
Instruments of Vision: Eye Tracking as an Embodied Interface, ACM – A detailed exploration of eye-tracking systems as embodied interfaces in interactive art.
Instruments of Vision, SIGGRAPH 2021 – Presentation on the relationship between machine vision and perception in robotics.
Sentimental Machines, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation – Designing emotional encounters with machines as an alternative interface with intelligences.
Envisioning Machines, ArtBizTech, 2021 – A lecture on looking at our perception of machines and intelligence.
Your Eye's Motion by Luna, DigitalFUTURES Young: Interactive Design – Discussing the creation of Luna, a robot designed to engage with humans emotionally through eye-tracking.
Navigating Distance: Bodies and Spaces, So-Far, 2021 – Investigating spatial and digital boundaries in the era of remote communication.
Archives of Vision, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, 2021 – A lecture exploring the role of perception in robotics and interaction.
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Instagram: irem.rgb
