Embracing technology to respond to climate crisis

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Mirror Pavilion by Tipperary artist John Gerrard is currently being constructed at the Claddagh Basin in the city and will be officially opened next Thursday, September 3. Remaining in situ until Saturday, September 26, it is the first of two virtual worlds being created by Gerrard in a joint presentation between Galway International Arts Festival and Galway 2020.

The installation involves a seven-metre cubed structure, with mirrors on three sides – these were being added this week – and a high-resolution LED screen on the fourth. The artist has incorporated cutting-edge technology to present two imaginary worlds on that screen, Corn Work and Leaf Work.

Mirror Pavilion: Corn Work will be on display at the Claddagh until late September.  The action will move to Derrigimlagh Bog, Connemara, from Saturday, October 11 to Saturday, October 31 when Mirror Pavilion: Leaf Work will be presented.

Corn Work recalls the history of grain milling in Galway City and celebrates the powerful river that provided sustainable, clean energy for long-gone mills. It will feature four folk figures, virtual Strawboys, who will perform a symbolic wheel of production on the LED wall of the cube.  These Strawboys change with the seasons as they commemorate people’s relationship with agriculture and landscape in a time before diesel became the main source of energy for farming and industry.

By contrast, Mirror Pavilion: Leaf Work at Derrigimlagh presents a melancholy virtual figure on the LED screen of the Mirror Pavilion. Derrigimlagh was the site for the first trans-Atlantic radio signal from the Marconi Station in 1907 and it was also where Alcock and Brown crash-landed their Vickers Vimy plane in 1919 after they completed the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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