About

My name is Tom Keene and I am an artist, activist, and researcher who 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 municipal databases, wireless protocol, algorithms, electrical components, mobile devices, cloud servers, automated vacuum cleaners and biological sensors. I like to work with found objects, discarded electronics, wood, metal, modular synthesisers and analog instruments.

I make, program, write, and think with technologies to explore how they do things in the world. I work with technologies to produce outcomes beyond their original intent − such as experiments with network penetration tools and spreadsheets to map socio-technial dynamics. 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 that finds its origins within the work of Artificial Intelligence researcher Phil Agre. Agre’s approach was further developed by the former Centre for Cultural Studies (2007-2017) at Goldsmiths University of London.

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 artist collective OSA; and occasionally teach within 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).