Blvd. M Lemonnierlaan 124
1000 Brussels
+32 489 255 235
mm @ automatist.org
automatist.org

profile

Michael Murtaugh (b. 1972, Champaign, Illinois, USA) is a freelance programmer specialised in community databases, digital archives, and tools for new forms of reading and writing online.

education

1996: M.Sc. Media Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology / MIT Media Lab
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
1994: B.Sc. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

employment & associations

2003–present: Instructor in the Experimental Publishing Master XPUB
Piet Zwart Institute
Willen de Kooning Academy
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2014–present: Founder and member of Institute for Computational Vandalism.
2014–present: Employed at Constant VZW developing and researching Network infrastructure and applications both for the organisation and during workshops and special event.
2010–present: Member of Active Archives, a research project initiated by Constant investigating and developing digital archiving platforms for cultural institutions.
2009–present: Member of Constant VZW, Association for Art & Media Brussels. Participant in the Open Source Video interest group.
2010–2011: BAM, Instituut voor beeldende, audiovisuele en mediakunst, Gent, Belgium. Support for the Active Archives project as part of the Archipel project investigating sustainable archiving for Flemish cultural heritage.
2001–present: Automatist.org, Brussels.
Founder. See Exhibited and online work
1999–2001: Jam New Media (for Public Dialogue), Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Co-founder, partnership with Jeanine de Bruin; Designed and implemented projects with focus on uses of new media for science communication. See projects section.
1997–1999: newMetropolis Science & Technology Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Exhibition & Interactive design. Worked under design director James Bradburne.
1997: Medialab, Schellingkhout, The Netherlands
Interaction design / Programming Telecommunications Game “Get Connected”
1994–1996: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Research Assistant in the Interactive Cinema group under Glorianna Davenport.
1992: Fiducia, Karlsruhe, Germany
CASE (Computer aided software engineering) tool programming
1990: International Business Machines, White Plains, New York, USA
Summer Internship

selected publications

2020: Troubled Archives, in Roots & Routes, n.33 ARCHIVIO E’ POTERE
https://www.roots-routes.org/troubled-archives-the-story-of-how-an-individual-artistic-research-into-archives-becomes-a-collective-and-at-times-community-driven-project/; Eventual Consistency, in DiVersions v2, Constant. ISBN 9789081145992
https://diversions.constantvzw.org/publication/diversions_v2.pdf
https://diversions.constantvzw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Eventual_Consistency
2019: Situological Applications: Digitizing the Situationist Times, in These are Situationist Times! Torpedo Press, Oslo 2019. https://torpedobok.no/These-Are-Situationist-Times-1
2017: Giving the finger (back) to the digital: considering ‘visual vocabularies’ in relation to the Photographic archive of Asger Jorn’s SICV, In Lost and Living (in) Archives, Editor Annet Dekker
https://monoskop.org/images/1/11/Dekker_Annet_ed_Lost_and_Living_in_Archives_2017.pdf
2016: A bag but is language nothing of words in Mondotheque: A Radiated Book/un livre irradiant/een irradiërend boek
2015: Vandalist Iconophilia with Ellef Prestsæter, Matthew Fuller, and Nicolas Malevé; Concreta 05, June 2015 Re
2015: Eleven Orderings in Report from the Gutenberg Galaxy at Blaker #1
2014: Do (not) Repeat Yourself in Fun and Software: Exploring Pleasure, Paradox and Pain in Computing; edited by Olga Goriunova, 2014, Bloomsbury; From Print to Ebooks: a Hybrid Publishing Toolkit for the Arts. Institute for Network Cultures, Amsterdam. (Contributions / Editing / project participation) Specific blog posts can be found https://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing/author/michaelmurtaugh/
2008: Interaction in Software Studies \ a lexicon, edited by Matthew Fuller, MIT Press, 2008.
1997: Automatist storyteller systems and the shifting sands of story
with Glorianna Davenport
IBM Systems Journal, Volume 36, Number 3, 1997
1996: The Automatist Storytelling System
Putting the Editor’s Knowledge in Software
Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996
1995: ConText: Towards the evolving documentary
with Glorianna Davenport
Proceedings of the third ACM international conference on Multimedia
San Francisco, California, 1995

recorded presentations

2018: Performing the Data Drive, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, Dec 2018 aaaan.net hetnieuweinstituut (presentation video)
https://vimeo.com/316064308#t=4800s; Giving the Finger (Back) to the Digital: The Art and Politics of Archival Practice, Feb 2018, MACBA, Barcelona (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFLRAX_sgp8; Ecosystems of writing
Inteview made as part of Creating Commons Worksession, Basel
http://creatingcommons.zhdk.ch/?p=617
https://vimeo.com/309009024; The Art and Politics of Archival Practice. A càrrec de SICV
MACBA, Barcelona
https://youtu.be/a5PO7QhTzHU
2017: Situated Publishing: Writing with and for Machines, with An Mertens & Sarah Garcin, Transmediale, Berlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTPyO0BrO-8
2016: Scandinavian Institute for Computational Vandalism
Libre Graphics Meeting 2015, London
https://youtu.be/wANo6M_swoY

exhibited and online work

2019

The Recognition Machine, with Antje Van Wichelen
http://recognitionmachine.vandal.ist/

These are Situationist Times: An Online Interface on display as part of the exhibition Pinball Wizard, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. http://vandal.ist/thesituationisttimes/

2018-2019

Situationist Times Digital Interface, produced for the exhibition The Situationist Times: Same Player Shoots Again! Produced with Torpedo Books, Oslo

Malmö Konsthall, Sweden
https://www.konsthall.malmo.se/en/utstallning/jacqueline-de-jong-the-situationist-times/

http://www.torpedobok.no/ Torpedo Publishers, Oslo

2013 — 2015

Guttorm Guttormsgaard: 11 Orderings, an online interface to the objects of Norwegian graphic designer and artist Guttorm Guttormsgaard.

2012 — 2014

Erkki Kurenniemi “In 2048” (ongoing), an online interface to digital archive of Erkki Kurenniemi. The digital archive was exhibited as part of Documenta 13 in Kassel (2012), at Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark (2013) at Kiasma, Helsinki (2014).

2012

Open House Brussels, an editors interface (based on Active Archives) and front end video player to allow on-the-fly editing of a collection of interview material based on tags.

2011 — 2013

Schaarbeeksetaal, an online audio dictionary related to language particular to a neighborhood in Brussels. Django-based CMS and front-end with time based text.

2008 — present

Active Archives, project to explore shared archiving platforms for cultural institutions. Project initiated by Constant.

2009—2010

TransLearning an online “learning histories” project related to sustainable agriculture. Collaboration with Jeanine de Bruin, the Athena Institute at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and TransForum.

2010-2011

Archipel on-site and online interface to a musical collection for La Médiathèque de la Communauté française de Belgique asbl, Brussels. Together with ÜBERKNACKIG.

2010

Cinema du Reel “Videotheque” interface for on-site visitors to view festival films on demand.

2005–2010

Videodagboek: Borstkanker / Videodagboek: Prostaatkanker
(Videodiary: Breast Cancer / Videodiary: Prostate Cancer)
with Jeanine de Bruin for the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF), Amsterdam, NL
Design and production of streaming video-based websites to support the decision making process of those diagnosed with cancer. Video clips give a firsthand account of doctor’s visits, treatment, and at-home interviews. Design included specialised CMS to manage subtitles and auxiliary textual information tracks synchronized with the streaming video.
http://dagboek.kwfkankerbestrijding.nl/

2005

Vathorstgroeit.nl
A “video wiki” for a developing suburb of the Dutch city of Amersfoort. The site allows residents to upload video clips and supports grouping and annotating the clips to create a community-based “evolving documentary”. NB: the editing capabilities are only available when registered and logged in.

2005

Open History Timeline: Web Design Timeline
with Femke Snelting
Design and programming of a custom content management system to support communal history writing. Through an open structure of questions and answers placed on a timeline, participants give their definition of the first ten years of web design.
http://www.designtimeline.org

2005

Robott.org
with Joost Bottema
Design and programming custom content management system / navigation system for an online magazine style presentation of student projects in visual communication.
http://www.robott.org

2004

Map of Creativity
with Remon Tijssen, James Bradburne for the Next Generation Foundation, UK
Design and programming of an interactive visualisation and navigation tool for an extensible database of innovative education projects throughout the world.

2003

European Seminar on Multilevel Governance: Video Presentation
with Jeanine de Bruinfor the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs (BZK), The Hague, NL
Design and programming of an interactive video summary of report about citizen participation for the EU.

2002

Unravelling Histories
Collaboration with De Geuzen, NL
Design and programming online database and public browser for an extensible collection of over 200 cross-indexed photographs and texts.
http://www.unravelling-histories.org

2002

Blood: Perspectives on Art, Power, Politics and Pathology
with Joost Bottema for the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Art (mak.frankfurt), Germany
Design and programming of an online database and browsing system for an exhibition collection of over 300 items and associated texts. Developed “word-linking” an automatic word-based cross-reference system.
http://automatist.org/blood

2001

Txtbk.com
Collaboration with Joost Bottema
Design and programming of an experimental online hypertext reading system.
http://robott.org/book2

2001

Jol-Fix
with Jeanine de Bruin (Jam New Media) for Jol-Fix B.V., NL
Design and production of a website with an online digital catalog using short video fragments to situate product use.

2001

Echte Welvaart
with Jeanine de Bruin (Jam New Media) and Joost Bottema for Stichting Echte Welvaart, Utrecht, NL
Design and programming of a website and content-management system, including the “atlas”, a tool for browsing and visualizing patterns among over 400 project descriptions dynamically organized by theme, location, or target audience.
http://www.echtewelvaart.nl/atlas_frames.cgi?_pageid=63

2001

Comment Browser
Design and programming of an experimental interface to support “non-linear” reading of discussion threads.
http://automatist.org/commentbrowser/

2001

Bio50
with Jeanine de Bruin (Jam New Media) for the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, NL
Design and production of a video-based CD-ROM commemorating 50 years of the biology department at the VU.

2000

Xenotransplantie: kan dat?
with Jeanine de Bruin (Jam New Media) for Stichting Consument en Biotechnologie (Foundation for Consumers and Biotechnology), NL
Design and production of an interactive video-based CD-ROM for use in small scale “community meetings” to stimulate discussion around the use of animals for human organ transplantation.

1999

E21.nl (Energy in the 21st century)
with Jeanine de Bruin (Jam New Media) for the Van Staveren Stichting, Arnhem, NL
Design and programming of content management system for an education website to stimulate students to study energy sciences.

1999

Klonen Kloneren
with Jeanine de Bruin (Jam New Media) for the Rathenau Instituut, The Hague, NL
Design and production of a video-based summary and interactive exhibition for a public campaign about cloning technology.

1995

News in the Future, MIT Media Lab
Design and programming of an experimental interface demonstrating the idea of an “elastic canvas”, a hierarchical presentation of a project abstracts in a single seamless display.
http://automatist.org/nif/

1995

ConTour: Boston Renewed Vistas, MIT Media Lab
Design and programming of an experimental interface for an “evolving documentary”.
http://automatist.org/contour/

teaching and speaking

2015

Workshop in Blaker, Norway in conjunction with Eleven Orderings, See publications.

2015

Close Reading Session Kenneth Goldsmith’s Uncreative Writing; Participation and network infrastructure.

2015

Cqrrelations; Participation and network infrastructure.

2014

Relearn, Summer School Second Session, Brussels

2010

Presentation, participant in panel “(Pro) Active Archives”, Economies of the Commons 2

2010

Presentation: “Do (not) Repeat Yourself”, Software and Fun Symposium, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

2004

Seminar “Making Data Visible”
Invited Speaker; London Knowledge Lab, University of London, UK

2000–2003

Merz Akademie, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Stuttgart
Developed and led 3 separate 5-day workshops on topics related to design of interactive media. (July 2000, June 2002, and May 2003)

2003

International Film Festival Rotterdam / Submarine, Bruno Felix
Invited Speaker / mentor Masterclass for Interactive Documentary Makers

2001

Mediamatic Salon @ Baby, Amsterdam
Invited speaker

2001

Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Participation as mentor in video for science communication class

2000

Mediamatic, Amsterdam, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer
Participation in 2 workshops as speaker / mentor for “Gedrag Ontwerpen” program

http://www.mediamatic.nl/workshops/archief/2000_01/verhalenspelen_docu.html

http://www.mediamatic.nl/workshops/archief/2000_01/topologie2_sprekers.html

1999–2000

Jam New Media
Co-development and deployment of workshops for online video production

2000

International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA)
Invited speaker and panel participant “Docs Online” program

2000

Seminar “Information in bits and genes”
Invited Speaker; Technology & Agrarian Development Group, Wageningen UR

1999

Preferred Placement: The Hit Economy, Hyperlink Diplomacy and Web
Invited Speaker; organized by Richard Rogers
http://www.govcom.org/symposium.html

1997

CILECT: Centre International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinéma et de Télévision
Invited Speaker; (International Association of Cinema and Television Schools)
Congress 1997: Training for the Next Century, Ebeltoft Denmark

1995

International Documentary Film Festival Rotterdam
Invited Speaker; “Exploding Cinema” Program, February 1995

1995

Banff Center for the Arts, Alberta, Canada
Participation as presenter with Glorianna Davenport in Interactive Storytelling workshop.

1995

ACM Multimedia Conference, San Francisco, USA
Presented paper with Glorianna Davenport (see publications)

Michael Murtaugh

profile

education

employment & associations

selected publications

recorded presentations

exhibited and online work

teaching and speaking

citations

awards

skills