Anna O'Leary

Anna’s practice focuses on the cultural and political role of architecture, specifically the intersection between language, the digital and the built environment. Her work is centred on multidisciplinay practice with an interest in animation, community engagement and digital technologies. Anna’s current work explores the spatial implications of the technological exclusion of minority languages, specifically within the context of Wales. It investigates the generation of domestic space though mistranslation.

Originally from Cardiff, Anna completed her BSc in Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, proceeded by a professional background in the practices Jestico + Whiles and SODA Studio. During her time in practice, Anna was involved in numerous volunteering projects, including OpenCity, Matt and Fiona and RIBA Architecture Ambassadors.

Alexa, stopiwch Anwybyddu Fi focuses on the digital exclusion of minority languages, specifically within the context of Wales.

The investigation begins by analysing the historical and current context of the Welsh language, discussing the slow erasure of Welsh and therefore its culture over five hundred years. Currently, Welsh language and culture faces new forms of digital threats: platform capitalism, digital information disparity and technological exclusion - all actively homogenising the Welsh culture and discouraging the use of the minority language both on and off-line. This occurs at four scales, the computer, the home, the neighbourhood and the territory.

Thus, this project asks: How can welsh-speakers refuse erasure of their language? How can Welsh-language speakers utilise their technological absence? And how can the nostalgic Welsh home be reinvented and become the site of activism?

This project intervenes within the scale of home, through a speculative future performative animation. Addressing the market devaluation of minority languages, this animation aims to highlight the relevance the Welsh language can still hold. Sited within a typical West Wales home, the proposal utilises everyday conversation and technological mistranslation to generate unfamiliar architectures and objects of domesticity. The film exposes how Welsh has the ability to both estrange and fuse with technology. The unusual architectures of domesticity constructed through mistranslation could be redefined as new symbols of welshness. Wales has the opportunity to explore new manifestations of its Welsh identity.

The story of this exaggerative speculated future creates a narrative around a new form of the Welsh language, which has been simplified and hybridised to be recognised by the Alexa technology. This new form of distorted Welsh has been employed overtime to accommodate speaking to ai systems: new smart technologies cannot understand the old Welsh letters, speech pattern and accent.

The story follows a multigenerational singular family, whose homes are located on the same street in Llandudoch. The grandparents speak this old version of Welsh whilst the parents and children speak the new simplified Welsh and hybrid English.

Thus, the technologies of the home consistently misunderstand the commands and conversations of the grandparents old Welsh.These wrong commands and mistranslation of conversation generates glitched, mismatched objects, new forms of architectural features, and unique spaces of domesticity. It depicts a clash of traditional Welsh architecture vs these new mistranslated spaces; simultaneously demonstrating a clash of linguistics through both traditional Welsh sayings and new Welsh slang.