Connect-ing

 

Site specific video installation for the Accenture Gallery, Science Gallery Dublin

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Commissioned for the British and Irish Neuroscience Conference 2019

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Connecting is an abstract, exploratory video installation, designed to be explored, walked into and walked around. The video is projected onto 22 hanging panels of transparent material, the installation moving with the people that view it. The audio has been transposed from individual recordings of an MRI scanner in an active and resting state into a new composition by musician Colm McGowan. 

 

The video includes neurons connecting and disconnecting in rat embryo cells, cultured by the artist with neuroscientist Catalina Vallejo during the CURAM Art and Science Residency in NUI Galway 2015. This is superimposed onto videos of watercolour drawings and flowings, making correlations between organic materials, branches, trees and growth, and how brain neurons connect and grow. Footage of the artist’s brain in an MRI scanner has been re configured into flower motifs.

 

The piece is inspired by time spent working with people affected by dementia, during the Artist in a Healthcare Setting Residency Award 2017 by Age & Opportunity and Bealtine Festival.

 

Special thanks to Dr. Aine Kelly, TCD, Dr. Richard Roche, Maynooth University, Colm McGowan,  Andrew Allen, Sojo Joseph, MRI department, Trinity College: Dr. Catalina Vallejo, NUIG, Theresa Czerniak, Aisling Mulhern and Andy Moon.

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Video filmed by and courtesy of Tadgh Conway at www.tigermedia.ie