Julie Freeman

Biography

Freeman's work has focused on using electronic technologies to ‘translate nature’ – whether it is through the sound of torrential rain dripping on a giant rhubarb leaf, a pair of mobile concrete speakers who lurk in galleries haranguing passersby with fractured sonic samples, or by providing an interactive platform from which to view the flap, twitch and prick of dogs' ears.

In 2005 she launched her most known digital artwork, 'The Lake', which used hydrophones, custom software and advanced technology to track electronically tagged fish and translate their movement into an audio-visual experience. The work was developed over three years and was supported by Tingrith Coarse Fishery (which was run by the artist's mother) and a two-year fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). It was exhibited at the Tingrith Fishery in Bedfordshire.

She was artist-in-residence at the Microsystems and Nanotechnology Centre at Cranfield University (2007-9) where, with Professor Jeremy J Ramsden, she created works that aimed to increase public understanding of self-assembly and organising processes at the nanoscale, and their potential social impacts and consequences.

Freeman is a graduate of the MA in Digital Arts at the Centre for Electronic Arts, Middlesex University, London and Board Member of nonprofit collective MzTEK (which encourages women artists to pick up technical skills). She has been featured on the BBC World Service programme The Science Hour and The Guardian's online Tech Weekly podcast.

She is currently a PhD student and research technician in the Media and Arts Technology lab at Queen Mary University of London.