Please join us for the exhibition preview at Gallery North
Thursday 12th March 5–7pm
All Welcome. Refreshments will be served.
Exhibition continues until Friday 10th April 2026
Terra Null brings together staff and postgraduate researchers from Arts and the School of Geography and Natural Sciences, exploring connections between NewSpace industries and cryptocurrencies, data infrastructure, extractivism and histories of colonisation.
Paul Dolan’s Extraterritorial photographic series depicts American rocket launch facilities in Texas and New Mexico as extraterrestrial landscapes rendered in stark black and white via a specialised infrared camera. A new video work Soft Launch uses computer simulation techniques to inflate 3d models of NewSpace infrastructure into mylar balloons, drawing parallels with NASA’s launch of the Echo 1 passive satellite in 1960 – a 100ft spherical balloon used to connect the east and west coast of America via radar signals.
Alis Oldfield’s OMEN, Polyphonic Orbit, is a sonic artwork that gives voice to three historically significant comets who have visited as our planet has undergone profound ecological and technological transformation. Witnessing histories of enclosure, industrialisation, and transhumanist philosophy, mirrored later in our digital networks, the work questions what these deep-time travellers might perceive next as Earth accelerates toward unknown technological futures.
Exhibition is open Friday 13th March – Friday 10th April
The exhibition programme includes, Extra terra nullius: Off-worlding the externalities of AI, crypto mining and cloud computing with Orbital Data Infrastructure - A talk by Dr Pete Howson, Wednesday 18th March 1-2pm.
Gallery North is open:
Thursday & Friday 12-4pm
Saturday 10-2pm
or by appointment.
Paul Dolan is an Assistant Professor in Design, Arts and Creative Industries. His research adopts a critical approach to digital technologies and environment, using a combination of practice-based, social science and fieldwork-based methods. Since 2020 he has produced interdisciplinary research with political ecologist Dr Pete Howson, Northumbria University.
Pete Howson is an Assistant Professor in Geography and Natural Sciences. His research looks at how space technologies, token economies and markets for environmental services are changing human relationships with the non-human world.
Alis Oldfield is an artist, educator based in Birmingham. Her research project imagines the internet as a landscape with ecological systems, as a way to diagnose its health. She is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD studentship at Northumbria University.
Gallery North, Sandyford Building, Sandyford Road, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8QE