Nocht Studio Ireland Selected for IN-SITU EU Platform 2025–2028
Congratulations to Nocht Studio Ireland on being chosen as one of the emerging artists for the first cycle (2025–2028) of the IN SITU Platform, the Creative Europe supported network dedicated to artistic creation in public space. Nocht Studio is the sole practice based in Ireland to receive this distinction in the current round.
Nocht was founded in 2018 by Martin McGloin and Philip Ryan with studios and workshops in both Clonmel, Tipperary, and Beltra, Sligo.
The studio will develop 'The Random Project' - an ongoing collaboration with Extern Problem Gambling, examining how design and behavioural mechanisms from gambling environments shape people’s experience of public space. The work builds on research and prototyping supported in 2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland, Creative Ireland through Creative Waterford, Waterford City & County Council, and Waterford Gallery of Art.
Participation in IN SITU will enable Nocht Studio to extend the project to new European contexts, working with partner organisations across the network and presenting at an immersive laboratory hosted by Lieux Publics in Marseille later this summer.
'Selection for IN SITU provides a critical platform for expanding 'The Random Project' internationally and interrogating the social architectures of gambling across Europe.' Philip Ryan from Nocht Studio
Nocht Studio | The Random Project
The Random Project is a socially engaged, research-driven public art initiative examining addiction mechanisms embedded within contemporary gambling environments. It explores how gambling operators strategically engineer addiction through environmental design, user experience, and frictionless interfaces—methods increasingly mirrored by tech industries developing addictive digital products.
Building on extensive research supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Creative Ireland, the project collaborates with academics, behavioural scientists, policy experts, and individuals with lived experience of gambling harm. Central concepts include Natasha Dow Schüll’s 'asymmetric collusion' highlighting exploitative relationships between gamblers seeking immersive 'flow states' and operators maximising user engagement; a dynamic analogous to compulsive smartphone usage behaviours.
Public spaces are historically integral to gambling such as casinos, betting shops, and digital platforms, all of which serve as hyper-efficient extraction markets. The project repurposes urban sites like vacant retail spaces and transit hubs into interactive installations using gambling architecture's subtle coercion techniques. Audiences experience, rather than merely observe, these invisible mechanisms. This phase focuses on creating site-specific, scalable prototypes adaptable to various European contexts. Rather than extracting sites of trauma, the project focuses on enabling audiences to engage with the mechanics of addiction through tangible interventions, encouraging critical reflection on gambling, digital consumption, and algorithm-driven behaviours.
- Format: interactive installations supplemented by dialogic events
- Size of audience: varies - one to one, to large audiences 100+
- Specific location: vacant retail and commercial units, public plazas, and transit hubs
- Timing / duration: 24/7 interactive installations installed for a various number of weeks
The IN SITU Platform is co-funded by the European Union under the Creative Europe Programme and coordinated by Lieux Publics, the European and National Centre for Artistic Creation in Public Space (Marseille, France). The platform supports 14 partners in 11 countries, fostering innovative artistic practices beyond traditional venues.