23 days till…

 

…the reserve gets transplanted in bits & pieces of mind and matter to the gallery space at the Joinery. The first alchemy. We’re working on a few ideas for ‘events’ and so on to take place during the week, so a rough sketch is:

Weds 23rd

6-7pm The Writing Workshop all welcome, you’ll just have to email me in advance… more on this anon.

7-8pm Welcome one & all – meet the artists, chat about the work, have a beverage of some sort…

Thurs 24th

‘In Conversation…’ Myself, Siobhán and hopefully Slavek Kwi (who has made a sound piece on the bog, facilitated by Siobhán) will have a chat about our work with whoever comes along.

Fri 25th

We’ll just be open for people to come along & check out the work – one of us will probably be present.

Sat 26th

A day of demonstrations – Siobhán will have her seismogram set up in the gallery, and will demonstrate how it works, and I’ll be making thaumotropes with whoever wants to join in.

Sun 27th

Open all day, with a chill out afternoon/evening of quality jazz… to be confirmed!

We’ll be tightening this all up over the next few days – so watch this space for more info. The show will definitely be open from 12-6pm Thurs to Sunday… with longer hours on days with events probably.

Metaphor…

I’ve definitely become more & more interested in how metaphors act upon understanding, how they influence communication, and how they can both improve and disintegrate a person’s ability to think.

I was chatting with Siobhán earlier about the question of ‘why’ we are transplanting work from one place to another, from Killaun Bog, to our respective studios & this blog, and eventually to the gallery in Stoneybatter. Why are we doing this? Isn’t that the way of things, the way of language, the way of communication? The anxiety to explain why… anxiety to explain why…

…It’s personal – it’s a metaphor… perhaps. It’s unfolding.

I was reading an article today on Ecology, Complexity and Metaphor and I found it very helpful & reassuring, regarding the above, and the implication of declaring ones art as metaphor. The writers are James D. Proctor and Brendon M. H. Larson:

” The Greek root of metaphor means ‘to transfer or to carry’, and

Metaphor implies a mapping between two domains”

They go on to write:

“We may…conceive of metaphors as nomadic terms that link

disparate discourses, both public & scientific”

This idea of a transference or carrying over makes a lot of sense to me – a relation between two things, or between several things… but it seems that there must always be more than one for the carrying over to happen, and then there’s the action of tracing that relation, linguistically or visually or aurally… Allowing one place to carry meaning over to another – an effort to understand experience, to understand one’s place in things.

And sure this is an eternal effort, and entirely human perhaps…

…I don’t know whether animals use metaphors?

Seismometer RHA studio July 2010

I built a seismometer in my studio last summer, which was operated by simulations of sound waves of volcanic activity transmitted through speaker and a computer.

Seismogram sound drawings…

Clapping Music & the potential for Hammers…

I’m working on developing a composition for Hammers – it’s all very tentative at the moment, but I’m working with the idea of conversation or communication, between two. It’s provisionally called Hammer Chorus…

I’m taking my cue from memory – when I visit the bog these days there’s always some point where I very strongly recollect the sounds of the hammers that brought the walkway into being. There would have been people dispersed across the tracks of the walkway, the initial skeleton, laid down onto the heavy bog oak sleepers. Small teams would choose their spot, and begin laying down the planks – hammering & chatting into the day. So there would be a lovely echoing of hammering, an accidental percussion, canoning into the atmosphere – and at some moment or other, for some reason or other, all of the impacts would merge into one beat, just a moment. The beats would all move forward toward that centre point, and then move away… and off into the apparent randomness again.

I really want to explore this phenomenon – and I think this really is quite a big idea, one that will demand a bit more time & learning on my part. But for now I’m going to experiment with the idea of simply picking a couple of counting patterns and over laying them… I have the help of a very fine jazz musician, and while we were recently chatting about all of these ideas he reassuringly mused:

” Things happen at different rates, they always come around eventually”

Steve Reich seems to in tune with this sentiment:

Though I’m not aiming for a Steve Reich level just yet!

16.1.11

Butterfly Lane - cut back.

Found between the Lane and the Clearing

The Clearing

Rain

Found Frame

Horizon…

Filming on the bog, October 2010.

horizon

late 14c., from O.Fr. orizon (14c.), earlier orizonte (13c.), from L. horizontem (nom. horizon), from Gk. horizon kyklos “bounding circle,” from horizein “bound, limit, divide, separate,” from horos “boundary.” The h- was restored 17c. in imitation of Latin.

(Taken from the online Etymology Dictionary)

•

The bogland reserve at Killaun is limited

by boundary – It’s sky is limited,

Yet tells of its own infinity.

If you walk out from the walkway

You will hit the edge

So I’m told.

•

The Horizon has a cliff face,

and I aim to scale it.

“Get some perspective!” cried the Europeans…

When we look at whether Europeans believe that scientists are only looking at very specific scientific and technological issues and this makes them unable to oversee problems from a wider perspective, 47% of respondents agree and 22% disagree that this is the case.

Europeans, however, are not convinced that nowadays the problems we are facing are so complex that specialists in science and technology are no longer able to understand them; 37% of respondents agree with this while 34% disagree that this is so.

From The Special EUROBAROMETER 340. “Science and Technology”

J.D. Foley

Dictionary of Earth Sciences

 

HORIZON noun

Horizon describes a horizontal layer, or stratum, either in the soil or in rocks. Horizon is also the point in the distance at which the land seems to meet the sky.

The fossils were all found at one particular horizon within the rocks.

 

Excerpted from the Mini Illustrated Science Dictionaries series, purchased at the Botanic Gardens on the 16th October 2010 for €1.50. A very happy purchase.

J.D. Foley

Assembling things…

latex forms & burnt paper experiments

laying things out in studio... making connections in our research