about
artist statement
My practice centres on designing living worlds for machines to inhabit - creatures, environments, and visual systems that mediate between human bodies and digital ecologies. For two decades I have worked in collaborative new media practices, contributing the visual and conceptual core of installations that ask audiences to reconsider their relationship to technology, ecology, and each other.
I am drawn to the moment when a digital form becomes something an audience believes is alive. The creatures and environments I make are not representations of life - they carry life's logic: responsiveness, unpredictability, the sense of another agency present in the space. When those forms are embedded in interactive systems, they become the actual medium of exchange between participants. The work is not about technology; technology is what allows the work to happen.
My collaborations with Embodied Media and Keith Armstrong have been the primary context for this practice - not as a service provider or technical executor, but as a co-creator who helped shape each work's visual language, conceptual direction, and audience experience from the earliest stages of development through to exhibition.
biography
Stuart Lawson is a Cairns-based visual and 3D artist whose work spans interactive new media installation, creature and environment design, and digital imagery for large-scale artworks. His practice has developed across two decades of sustained collaboration with Embodied Media and Queensland University of Technology's Creative Industries faculty.
Lawson's first major collaborative work, Intimate Transactions (2004–2008), earned an Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica - the leading international award for interactive and media art - and entered the permanent collection of ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe. The work toured 22 venues across four continents, including the ICA London, Ars Electronica, BIOS Athens, and Media Art China Beijing. His co-authored chapter on the work's creature and environment design was published by ACID Press in 2006.
Subsequent works - KNOWMORE (House of Commons) (2009), Finitude (Mallee: Time) (2011–2013), and Inter-State (2016–2018) - extended this practice across increasingly varied ecological, political, and philosophical territory. His visual imagery has been shown at the State Library of Queensland, the Mediations Biennale Poznan, Gallery Artisan Brisbane, Screen Space Melbourne, UTS Gallery Sydney, The Mesh South Africa, ISEA 2018 Durban, and Spectra Festival Adelaide.
Lawson's work has been the subject of peer-reviewed academic analysis in Fibreculture Journal and critical essays by leading design theorists.
cv
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2005
Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention Interactive Art category · Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria For Intimate Transactions (as 3D artist)
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2003
Winner — Communication Design Graduate Exhibition Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
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ongoing
ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe Germany - Intimate Transactions
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2018
Spectra Festival Adelaide, Australia · Inter-State
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2018
ISEA 2018 - International Symposium on Electronic Art Durban, South Africa · Inter-State
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2017
The Mesh / Vrystaat Kunstefees Free State, South Africa · Inter-State
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2016
UTS Gallery - Over Many Horizons University of Technology Sydney · Inter-State
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2013
Screen Space Melbourne · Finitude (Mallee: Time)
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2012–13
Mildura Palimpsest #8 Mildura · Finitude (Mallee: Time)
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2012
Gallery Artisan Brisbane · Finitude (Mallee: Time)
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2010
Mediations Biennale Poznan, Poland · KNOWMORE
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2009
State Library of Queensland Brisbane · KNOWMORE
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2008
BIOS Athens, Greece · Intimate Transactions
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2007
Media Art China Beijing · Intimate Transactions
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2006
ICA London & Ars Electronica London, UK & Linz, Austria · Intimate Transactions
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2005
Ars Electronica Linz, Austria · Intimate Transactions · Prix Honorary Mention
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2004
Queensland University of Technology Brisbane · Intimate Transactions world premiere
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2012
Lone Bertelsen - Affect and Care in Intimate Transactions Fibreculture Journal, FCJ-149 · peer-reviewed
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2006
Stuart Lawson, Keith Armstrong et al - Avatars, Creatures and Environments Chapter in Intimate Transactions: Art, Exhibition and Interaction within Distributed Network Environments · ACID Press
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2005
Tony Fry - Critical Essay on Intimate Transactions Independent essay
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2005
Animating the Interactive Spin RealTime Arts