The Parks Service

The Parks Service, also known as Dermot Fitzpatrick, has always been interested in how numbers become sounds. Growing up as an isolated, self-described nerd in Glenasmole, The Parks Service found himself and his world in computers, programming, role-playing games and techno music. Ever since he got his first deck (a Commodore VIC-20—with 5k of RAM—bought for him in 1981 by a generous uncle), The Parks Service has been programming games, music and hacks that seek to erase the seams between digital and analogue realities, subvert the hierarchical tendencies of technocratic power and make the future happen today.

The Parks Service was born in 1973 in Dublin and attended the Dublin Institute of Technology, graduating in 1994 with a degree in Computer Science. He went on to study at the Sound Training Centre in Dublin, and received an MA in Music Technology from the Centre for Computational Musicology and Computer Music at the University of Limerick. The Parks Service’s interest in music has always been filtered through his interest in programming, electronics and technology. Inspired by both the underground rave scene he called home in his teens and twenties and the computer games he played as a youngster, he seeks to use music technology to open up the possibility for the creation of alternate imaginative realms, utopian, beautiful and full of hope. He is currently exploring a life-long interest: hacking closed technologies and democratising innovation, especially iPods, SETI, Second Life and museum audio guides.

The Parks Service’s works have been performed and exhibited at Boston CyberArt Festival (Boston, USA), the Transmediale Festival (Berlin, Germany), Conflux (New York, USA), the International Conference on Auditory Display (Montreal, Canada), Dorkbot (New York, USA), BELEF Belgrade (Belgrade, Serbia) and Tunedcity (Berlin, Germany), as well as at countless raves and underground dance venues. He has held residencies at IMPAKT (Holland), Interspace (Bulgaria) and the Werkleitz Center for Media Arts (Germany).

Some of The Parks Service’s most recent works include (YOUR NAME HERE), 5 Badges, Parking, inSErTI, Calling Star Ship Capricorn and i’m no po-lice. He currently lives in Dublin, where he works for an independent computer software company designing economic system simulations.