Maker. Thinker. Lawn Mowing Enthusiast.#
Sui Jackson is a Canberra-based contemporary artist and researcher whose work sits somewhere between affective computing, multi-agent systems, cyber-physical art, and his own particular relentless enthusiasm. He is interested in what he calls “yestalgia” - which is excitement about today, based on hopes from the past.
On his quest to bend the physical world to his will he was: an electrical linesman, a card-carrying member of the mid-90s dot-com bubble, a network guy who shepherded the Australian EFTPOS network through Y2K and off X.25 onto ISDN, a ceramicist, a glassblower, and co-founder of Project Grover — an autonomous outdoor robot that draws large-scale images (still in development). He has completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Glass) and an Advanced Masters in Contemporary Arts Practice at ANU. During which he built a multi-extruder ceramic 3D printer and taught it to make decisions based on wifi signal strength — the kind of thing that looks like a cry for help or an origin story, given he has since moved on to autonomising the lawn mower…
He has been described, repeatedly, as fearless about materials, and his habit of collecting skills across wildly different disciplines means he tends to arrive at problems from directions nobody was expecting.
“Ceramics is just socially acceptable pyromania”
Areas of Expertise: Affective Computing, Emergent Personalities, Multi-agent Systems, Cyber-physical Art, Salvaged Electronics, Machine Communication, Yestalgia, Cybernetics.