I’m Ruairi Glynn

I’m an artist, theorist, and educator working between art, robotics, and performance. I hold the position of Associate Professor at University College London, where I direct the Interactive Architecture Lab. My work has been exhibited internationally at galleries including the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, the National Art Museum of China, Ars Electronica, and Itaú Cultural. My transdisciplinary art practice explores what happens when machines don’t just move, but begin to behave—when they seem to listen, respond, and share space with us.

Alongside my practice, my research has long circled around cybernetics, interactivity, and what I call the aesthetics of animacy. I’ve co-edited the Fabricate series (UCL Press, 2011–2017) and written Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands (2009). My PhD, The Irresistible Animacy of Lively Artefacts (2019), asked a simple question that still drives me: why do we feel for machines that appear alive?

Collaboration has always been central to how I work. I’ve been fortunate to create projects with choreographers, puppeteers, engineers, and studios including Shobana Jeyasingh, Alexander Whitley, Ronnie Le Drew, Tellart, onedotzero and Marshmallow Laser Feast. My commercial clients range from Nike and Twitter to Arup and Bank of America.

Teaching is a major part of my life. In 2017 I founded the Design for Performance & Interaction master’s programme at UCL, and I’ve had the privilege of watching many of my students go on to define new fields of interactive art, architecture, and performance.

My forthcoming book, brings together more than two decades of making, writing, and teaching into a single argument: that our drive to animate the world is one of humanity’s most enduring creative impulses. I live between London and Montenegro with my family, continuing to explore the entanglements of art, machines, and life.