Brendan Dawes
The Art of Form and Code

 

I’ve always been fascinated by the creative possibilities of working with computers.

From the moment I plugged in a Sinclair ZX81 and a humble cursor blinked on screen inviting me to type something – to the generative systems I now build to “make a thing which makes a thing” – the curiosity has only increased.

Through working with these machines — these code based collaborators — I can place into the world my thoughts and ideas exploring our relationship and interactions with the analog and digital.

Brendan Dawes is a British artist and designer renowned for his playful yet thought-provoking explorations of data, technology, and everyday objects. Rooted in the ethos of remix culture, Dawes’s work often re-contextualises existing materials to examine how people experience the physical and digital worlds. By blending code, found objects, and tactile interfaces, he creates works that invite audiences to consider the poetry hidden in mundane moments and the hidden structures within complex data.

Dawes first gained wider recognition for works such as Cinema Redux, a visualization that deconstructs entire films into a series of cinematic fingerprints, revealing new patterns in familiar content. This approach – taking existing cultural artifacts and reshaping them to uncover fresh perspectives – exemplifies Dawes’s dedication to remixing culture, something he first explored when creating loops on tape for bootleg breakbeat albums on vinyl. Drawing on influences from design, architecture, and the playful spirit of the Dada movement, he frequently references the concept of the “readymade” using quotidian items as foundations for new experiments in visual form and interactivity.

Dawes’s work has been exhibited internationally and garnered acclaim from both the art and design worlds, with pieces featured at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By intertwining code-driven processes with physical objects and everyday ephemera, Brendan Dawes continually redefines how we interpret data, narrative, and the role of the artist-as-remixer in contemporary culture.

In 2024 he collaborated with American film maker Gary Hustwit to make the world's first generative film, about the musician, producer and artist Brian Eno. The film, titled Eno, is unique every time it is viewed, with 52 quintillion possible versions. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024 and was later shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

A Lumen Prize and Aesthetica Art prize Alumni, his work has been 3D printed on the International Space Station, honoured in awards including Fast Company, Information is Beautiful and D&AD and featured in many exhibitions across the world including Big Bang Data in thirteen cities, three MoMA shows in New York, Brighton Digital Festival, ArtFutura and ZKM. His Cinema Redux work became part of the MoMA permanent collection in 2008.

His work has been auctioned at Sotheby’s Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale, The Burnt Auction – the first NFT sale offered by an auction house in France with Fauve Paris and Generative Art and The Future an art exhibition in Shenzhen hosted by China’s largest auction house, Beijing Poly.

He is Visiting Professor of Computational Art at Manchester Metropolitan University and is represented in the UK and Europe by Gazelli Art House.

Data by itself is not enough; data needs poetry.

Selected Solo Shows

Selected Group Shows

Publications

Coverage