Sean Dockray

Sean Dockray is an artist, writer, and programmer based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, and a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the Monash University (MADA). His work, rooted in architecture and media theory, explores how data and computation shape contemporary life. In 2020, he co-founded Machine Listening with Joel Stern and James Parker, focusing on the political and aesthetic dimensions of sound in the context of AI and big data. The collective’s projects span diverse media, including artworks, musical performance, an expanded curriculum, online resources, curated events, and software instruments. Dockray’s previous collaborations, The Public School and AAAARG.ORG, examined the possibilities of self-organised pedagogy, forming the basis of his theoretical and practical approach. From 2004 to 2014, he was Curatorial Director of Los Angeles-based Telic Arts Exchange, curating exhibitions and experimental projects and providing a critical engagement with new media and culture.

Recent exhibitions include Direct Bodily Empathy at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre (2026); The Mourning After at RMIT Design Hub (2025); Signal To Noise at the National Communication Museum (2025); Image Economies at Monash University Museum of Art (2025); This Hideous Replica at RMIT Gallery (2024); v01ces at Galerie Nord | Kunstverein Tiergarten (2023); Data Relations at ACCA, Melbourne (2022); House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm at HKMV, Dortmund, Germany (2022); Don’t Be Evil, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2021); Eavesdropping at City Gallery, Wellington (2019); and Part of the Labyrinth, 10th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2019).

His written essays address topics such as falling (Palgrave Macmillan), machine listening (Sound Studies), artificial intelligence (Artlink), online education (Frieze), the militarisation of universities (in Contestations: Learning from Critical Experiments in Education), book scanning (Fillip), traffic control (Cabinet), and radio (Volume).

He is currently continuing research into the political economy of egocentric datasets as well as a collaborative project investigating Live Action Role Playing as a method for auditing foundation datasets.

Homepage: http://metadada.xyz