About Dr. Flatley
bio
Diarmid Flatley is a media artist, composer, and researcher who uses computation to develop compositional systems across sound, image, space, and interaction. His practice treats data as a compositional material whose internal organization can be articulated across multiple media through generative processes. Two related concepts underpin this practice: metacomposition, the design of generative systems that produce families of related works, and transmodality, the capacity of those systems to articulate a common structure across different media. Together, these concepts provide the theoretical framework for his investigation of how abstract structures acquire aesthetic form.
Flatley is a co-founder of Metaesthetica, a research-based design collective bringing together art, design, engineering, and the sciences. Through the collective, he investigates relationships among biodata, computation, and artistic practice. Recent projects include Organoid Protonoesis and Simulacra Naturae, which incorporate brain organoid activity into generative audiovisual, spatial, and material systems. Across these works, biodata shapes form, behavior, and temporal organization. The projects extend data representation into immersive and experiential forms of inquiry while examining the perceptual, cultural, and ethical implications of computational media.
His work has been presented, exhibited, and published through SIGGRAPH, ISEA, IEEE VISAP, SiGraDi, and The AI Art Magazine. Flatley holds a PhD in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MM in Music Theory and Composition from New York University.