1iing Heaney Announced as VECTOR Digital Artist
15th January 2025: Kildare County Council Arts Service, in collaboration with MERITS Innovation Thinkspace Naas, has announced 1iing Heaney as the recipient of the new VECTOR Digital Arts Residency.
1iing Heaney is a visual artist based in Leixlip Co. Kildare. Her focus for the residency will be to develop her practice that merges digital art, technology and ecology. Using computer-generated imagery her work explores how the Irish landscape, folklore and nature can be mediated through technology to create virtual worlds. She examines the boundaries between virtual and reality and our disconnection from the natural world.
VECTOR aims to support innovation and collaboration in the digital arts sector. Itwill provide 1iing with a space in MERITS Innovation Thinkspace, Naas, to work over a four-month period starting this January. The residency will also include bespoke mentoring with Jo Mangan, Artistic Director of Maynooth-based Performance Corporation and a place in the SPACE international multi-disciplinary artists residency in Paris in July 2025.
Eláine Donnelly, Acting Arts Officer, Kildare County Council said “We are delighted to announce 1iing Heaney as the recipient of this inaugural award for a Digital Artist based in Kildare. This residency is the first of its kind for the county and we welcome this new partnership with MERITS Innovation Thinkspace in resourcing the opportunity. VECTOR will support an artist working in the crossover between art and technology. Having access to MERITS will enable connection and creative conversations with the digital and technology organisations based there. Together with the mentoring provided by such a well-regarded practitioner as Jo Mangan, we hope this residency will lead to exciting opportunities for 1iing in the future”.
Lauren O Reilly, Programme Manager, MERITS commented “MERITS, as an Innovation Hub funded by Kildare County Council and Enterprise Ireland has always been a community focused base for entrepreneurs and digital creatives, we are delighted to be commencing our first digital artist in residence programme.”
Kildare Arts Service initiated the VECTOR Digital Arts Residency in response to its strategic priorities to Support Artists and reimagining space for art, and national policy to promote and develop existing resources in the Digital Arts sector in Kildare. The pilot residency is supported by MERITS and funded by Kildare County Council’s Arts Service with grant aid from The Arts Council of Ireland/An Comhairle Ealaíon.
