Pip Thornton

Pip Thornton is an artist and post-doctoral research associate in Creative Informatics at Edinburgh University. Her theory and practice revolves around critiquing and making visible structures of power within the digital economy. She gained her PhD in Geopolitics and Cybersecurity from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2019. Her thesis, Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction: A Critique of Linguistic Capitalism, put forward a theoretical, political and creative critique of Google’s search and advertising platforms, and included an artistic intervention into Google’s monetisation of language called {poem}.py.

Academic publications include A Critique of Linguistic Capitalism: Provocation/Intervention (GeoHumanities 2018), and Geographies of (con)text: Language and Structure in a Digital Age (Computational Culture 2017). Pip has has presented in a variety of venues including the Science Museum, the Alan Turing Institute and at the transmediale festival of art and digital culture in Berlin. Her work has featured in WIRED UK and New Scientist, and a collection from her artistic intervention {poem}.py is currently on display at the Open Data Institute in London. A new exhibition was shown at the Glucksman Gallery in Cork, Ireland as part the 2019 Electronic Literature Organization Conference & Media Arts Festival.

Twitter: @Pip_T

Image credit: Nick Robinson

Date of publication

Fri 4 Oct 2019