assembly
interactive installation
2022-23
From May to November 2022, I worked with the Jackie Clarke Collection, Co. Mayo, as artist-in-residence. I studied the archive, the museum and the collection to understand why Jackie Clarke chose to collect the objects there. Drawing from printed materials (newspapers, leaflets, autograph books) and the idea of technology as a device for how stories are spread, I created a new art installation that takes over the Memory Room in the collection museum from November 2022 until January 2024.
Assembly is a large mixed media artwork that uses printed material, video screens, projection, animation and sensor technologies. The printed words from newspapers 100 years old, and from today's equivalents, are obscured and barely legible. In the spaces between these confused stories, dreamlike films and printed photographs tell snippets of other stories. Autograph books, influenced by those in the museum collection, contain a trace of the people who have told their stories to me, and they were added to by visitors throughout the exhibition.
Technology is an important part of the message: Screens replace paper and printing press, and sensor-activated panels are activated by handwritten books. Throughout the space, animals and birds take part in telling the complex stories, reminding us that they are part of the narrative and also have homes which they build, maintain and return to. Each of these elements makes up part of a strange collection of objects and ideas that 'intra-active' and strung together as seemingly disparate parts that make up a world in the memory room.
In essence, the artwork is simply a reminder that no story is ever just black and white.
The artwork launched on November 19th 2022. The launch featured talks from Dr. El Putnam (artist-philosopher and Assistant Professor of Digital Media at NUI Maynooth), Cllr. Mark Duffy (Cathaoirleach Ballina MD), and Anne Marie Forbes (Jackie Clarke Collection), chaired by Ann Marie McGing (Arts Officer, Mayo County Council).
Dr. Putnam later wrote an article that includes this piece as part of a broader collection of artworks by Irish artists considering technology. View on MDPI at this link.
A 10-minute documentary about the artwork was created by Anula productions and can be viewed at this link.
assembly, 2022, interactive mixed media art installation: video, print, text, animation, RFID sensors, arduino, ad-hoc network, router, raspberry pi, timber, newspapers, GPT2 artificial intelligence system, python, processing, to room: 496 x 244 x 436cm
An interactive installation that responding to the historical objects at the Jackie Clarke Collection museum, Ballina, Co. Mayo.
A large mixed media artwork that uses printed material, video screens, projection, animation and sensor technologies. Printed words from newspapers of 1922 and 2022 are obscured by artificial intelligence systems and layered print processes; films on a projection and two monitors tell stories via other-than-human participants, focussed on the River Moy. Autograph books wired with sensors are connected via an ad-hoc network to other devices, changing the room and inviting audience engagement and participation.
The piece considers history from colonial and techno-cosmic perspectives, exploring what stories might have been told if the narrative had been from voices outside of the two dominant ones in post-independent Ireland.
influences
things I read or saw that helped create this project
- miguel ángel asturias men of maize (1975) book [LIT]
- karen barad what is the measure of nothingness (2012) book
- finn brunton, paula bialski, mercedes bunz communication (2019) book
- judith butler the force of nonviolence (2020) book
- liung chi wo untitled (love for sale) (2014) artwork
- kate crawford atlas of ai (2021) book
- vinciane despret living as a bird (2021) book
- monika dommann data centres: edges of a wired nation (2020) book
- buchi emecheta the joys of motherhood (1979) book [LIT]
- david graeber, david wengrow the dawn of everything (2021) book
- donna haraway staying with the trouble: making kin in the cthuluscene (2016) book
- stefano harney, fred moten the undercommons (2013) book
- kyōko hayashi from trinity to trinity (2010) book
- kairus behind the smart world (2015) artwork
- max liboiron pollution is colonialism (2021) book
- anna lowenhaupt tsing the mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins (2015) book
- rosaleen mcdonagh unsettled (2021) book
- doireann ní ghríofa a ghost in the throat (2021) book [LIT]
- kerri ní dochartaigh thin places (2021) book
- el putnam ghostwork (2023) artwork
- w.g. sebald the rings of saturn (1998) book [LIT]
- varia rosa (2020) artwork
collaborators
love to the amazing jackie clarke collection team
- anne-marie forbes
- nathan, sharon, ailish, stacy, tommy, sinead
- all those who contributed stories in 1922 or 2022, most of whom were anonymous
support team at mayo coco:
- katriona gillespie
- anne-marie mcging
- aoife o'toole
some other amazing people:
- amy, and now mella too
- micheál "tech wizard" herron
- dr. el putnam
- cllr mark duffy
financial support
people or organisations who helped fund the work
- Jackie Clarke Collection residency was supported by Mayo Arts Office under Decade of Centenaries funding.