Liffey Sensing - Art & Science Workshop
Art, Science, and the River - Siobhán McDonald’s Liffey Sensing Workshop
Project TERRAFORM’s artist-in-residence, Siobhán McDonald held a Liffey Sensing Workshop on February 18th to communicate her work with the European Union-funded STARTS4Water. McDonald is the STARTS4Water ambassador for Ireland, representing the river Liffey globally to contribute an artistic perspective to hydrologic science and technology in response to the drastic effects of climate change on our water systems. The Liffey Sensing workshop encouraged the attendees to artistically connect to the river Liffey and explore the river’s significance environmentally and socially. TERRAFORM PhD researcher Antonietta Knetge also attended and gave a brief presentation on the origins of the Liffey within the Wicklow mountains, the importance of the geology that supports the system, and Ireland’s rich geologic and fossil history. The attendees then created art inspired by the sounds and scents of the Liffey using marine herbarium specimens and local coastal sediment collected by McDonald. The photographs here illustrate the workshop and the incredible works by Artist Siobhán McDonald for the STARTS4Water project.
Project links:
https://starts.eu/starts4water-ii-residencies/
https://starts.eu/siobhan-mcdonald-shapeshifter/
by Antonietta Knetge
Cycads Bring us Together
Facilitating an exciting investigation into photosynthesis.
An exciting collaboration is underway between the Variable Light and Atmosphere (VAL) lab, Trinity College Botanic Gardens and the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland. The VAL lab has borrowed a variety of Cycads from both botanic gardens. The plants hail from all three extant Cycad families including Cycadaceae, Stangeriaceae, and Zamiaceae, capturing current diversity across the group.
Evolving around 280 million years ago, Cycads are an ancient group of gymnosperms. Often termed ‘living fossils’, these plants have existed since before the appearance of dinosaurs. Once dominating ancient ecosystems, todays Cycad species are limited to tropical and subtropical regions.
Borrowed Cycads have been acclimated to pre-set conditions within the state-of-the-art CONVIRON climate control chambers available at the VAL lab. Temperature, humidity and light spectra and intensity have been set to simulate the tropical environments in which today’s cycads reside.
Dr. Christos Chondrogiannis and Katie O’Dea from the ERC funded TERRAFORM project are studying photosynthetic characteristics of this unique group. The study aims to deeper understand the evolution of this iconic biological process which enables plants to synthesize energy from light.
The VAL lab would like to thank Trinity College Botanic Gardens and the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland for facilitating this research.
Siobhán McDonald captures landscapes at tipping points - The Boglands Are Breathing exhibition
'Siobhan McDonald communicate complex science in a visual way — reaching out to people with their heartstrings’
Siobhán’s latest exhibition – ‘The Boglands Are Breathing’ blends scientific and creative processes to make sculptures, videos, works on paper, paintings and sound pieces. The exhibition gathered numerous collaborators, bringing together scientists, conservators, musicians, philosophers, perfumers and celestial phenomena, all of whom collectively take part in the evolution of the work. Our shared boglands are positioned as the protagonists of an unseen drama, and this work makes visible the collective memory that is held in the rich repository that exists within the thin layer between the soil and the rocks. An installation entitled ‘A library of lost smells,’ consisting of plant species, gathered from numerous bog sites across Ireland acts as a slow distillation of deep time created from plants and mineral-rich bog waters, that explores links between smell & memory. The installation holds an assortment of hand-blown glass bottles containing scents from eight of the most important notes. Some of the vessels contain scent-infused remnants that were buried deep in a bog for over 20 years alluding to the low oxygen levels and unusual smells derived from the preservation conditions.
Find out more about Siobhán’s exhibition, which took place at Model Arts Centre in Sligo, from the Irish Times article.
Click below to see the short documentary on the exhibition.
