About

My name is Tom Keene and I am an artist, educator, reseacher, programmer, and activist. I currently lead the BA in Digital Media, Culture and Technology at Royal Holloway, University of London. My artist and activist-led research investigates the role of marginal and often obscure technological objects. I consider how technical objects construct, transform and amplify the social relations of everyday life. These objects have consisted of local authority database systems, social media posts, wireless protocol, algorithms, electrical components, mobile devices, cloud servers, automated vacuum cleaners and biological sensors. I like to work with code, electronics, found objects, wood, metal, sound, image, and video.

I make, program, write, and think with technologies to explore how they do things in the world. My practice considers technological histories, flows of power and knowledge, and complex sets of human and technological relations. My methodological approach draws from a critical technical practice (CTP) that finds its origins within the work of Artificial Intelligence researcher Phil Agre, and an approach to a CTP developed by the former Centre for Cultural Studies (2007-2017) at Goldsmiths University of London.

I am an advisory board member for The Moderators, an AHRC-funded project led by Professor Becky Shaw and Dr Rose Butler, exploring the influence of local community Facebook (FB) groups, in consultation with The Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence and Organised Crime Research (CENTRIC) at Sheffield Hallam University. A founding committe member of Refurbish Don’t Demolish housing activist group. I have collaborated with the artist group YoHa; been a researcher within the European Research Council Project ‘Citizen Sense’; worked with the pioneering media art gallery Furtherfield; am a founding member of the artist collective Open Systems Association (OSA), and have previously taught at the Creative Computing Institute at the University of The Arts London (UAL), and in Cultural Studes and Computer Science departments at Goldsmiths University of London.

My work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London 2013), Transmediale (Berlin 2013), Furtherfield (London 2013), Chelsea College of Art (London 2013), ISEA (Instanbul 2011), Dublin Science Gallery (Dublin 2010), Watermans Gallery (London 2010), and Tate Modern (London 2009).