The Unavoidable Interconnectedness of Everything: Part III – In/Flux - Leitrim Sculpture Centre 

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This incomplete installation employs eco-engineering solutions to produce stand-alone sculptures, that attempt to act as functional structures for both terrestrial and coastal adaptation, in response to the Climate Emergency that we are currently facing. Central to their design is their topographic complexity and adaptability to act as incubators for biodiversity.

 

The sculptures consist of a cross-section of materials used in their different stages of production. 3D printed models, produced from Topographic scanning of different environments, are used to produce moulds for concrete casts. These concrete casts have the potential to be utilsed in a number of settings, such as building facades as well as coastal defence and renewable energy structures, with benefits to the environment and surrounding communities. These same 3D models are also being used to produce moulds for the production of Mycelium casts, to be incorporated into the next phase of the project, to produce a living artwork. 

 

These sculptural objects act as the anchor of a larger installation, that includes an experimental video. 3D scanning and modelling technologies were used to produce an animation that is ambiguous to scale, as it navigates an array of environments that slip between the subterranean and the cosmic, incorporating a soundtrack that includes audio recordings produced as winds whip across the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf in Antartica. In one section of the animation the viewer encounters a generated representation of a 100 year old Sitka Spruce tree found on Campbell Island, a small island off the coast of New Zealand in the Southern Ocean, that some scientists believe “may hold the key to the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch”.1 Traces of radioactivity, from atomic bomb testing in the South Pacific, during the 1940s and 50s, were found in the rings of this tree, on the 43 square mile subantarctic island. It is believed that the tree may be the “synchronous global signature within geological - forming materials” required to “formally define the onset of the Anthropocene”. The Anthropocene is a popular term used by scientists to define the period of Earth’s history during which humans have had a decisive influence on the state, dynamics and future of the Earth system.

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This project was developed with the help of the UCD School of Civil Engineering, UCD Agriculture and Food Science Centre and the UCD Earth Institute as part of the UCD Parity Studios & UCD Earth Institute Residency Program.

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1  Dr. Christopher Fogwil, Professor of Glaciology and Paleoclimatology