Public Art Roundup
Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2020
Art Outside the Gallery Your Seedling Language Artist: Adam Gibney Site: St Catherine’s National School, Rush, Co. Dublin Commissioning body: Department of Education and Skills Commission type: Per Cent for Art Date advertised: October 2017 Date sited: July 2019 Budget: €35,000 – 70,000 Project Partners: St Catherine’s National School, Jennie Guy (Curator), BA Steel Fabricators, Kristian Doherty (Wood Turning), Arad Studios (Sound Recording), Jim Mansfield (Structural Engineer), Conor McCague (Installation Technician) ADAM GIBNEY’S site-specific artwork, Your
Seedling Language, was created for the new building of St Catherine’s National School, Rush, Co. Dublin. Curated by Jennie Guy, the artwork was launched in 2019 and is made of two parts: a series of light-and-sound-producing sculptures in the school’s entry stairwell and a sensor tower outside the school building. The artwork utilises environmental data that can be related to the growth of plants. Soil moisture levels, light levels and temperature detected by the sensor tower are used as organic compositional parameters that manipulate a generative, eight-channel vocal composition, comprised of audio samples of over 1,000 syllabic gestures.
As such, the artwork produces different versions of the composition, depending on the weather conditions outside the school building. So if it is a bright sunny day, the composition will sound different to if it is a colder or darker evening. Your Seedling Language takes its inspiration from ideas surrounding the theory of biolinguistics, providing the school with a language of its own. The development of this work stemmed from research into Fingal’s rich multicultural history and how this influenced the now unused Fingallian dialect. The artwork therefore aims to celebrate the mixture of cultures and languages that flourish in St Catherine’s National School.
Adam Gibney, Your Seedling Language, 2019, photograph by CJ Nash Photography, courtesy of the artist
