Silicon Synapse

Open Call Award - € 76,880

Silicon Synapse
2019
Real and Virtual world Installation at Carnegie Library, Swords, Fingal. 30-minute experience. 25 channel audio installation, Virtual Reality headset, 17 LED lights, actor, adapted abandoned building, chair, 3 audio tracks.

Silicon Synapse AlanJames Burns Installation at Carnegie Library, Swords

Silicon Synapse is an immersive Virtual Reality and psycho-acoustic experience that takes you through various environments, both physical and virtual. Silicon Synapse explores evolution, genetic engineering and transhumanism. Each viewer is engulfed by a conscious, dream-like realm as they travel through bodily forms composed of intense listening and visual experiences.

Silicon Synapse_Promotional Image

Silicon Synapse was installed within the repurposed historic setting of the Carnegie Library, Swords. This library was once a place of knowledge and learning, shaping the minds and synapses of thousands of people. The audience entered through the remnant doors of the library and were engulfed by the technology that has largely replaced it.

Created by AlanJames Burns, Silicon Synapse is a collaboration with Writer Sue Rainsford, Artist Jason Dunne and Composer Michael Riordan. The artwork was commissioned by Fingal County Council Arts Office and funded by the Arts Council of Ireland Open Call Award 2019, European Commission’s SciArt Residency programme and Cavan Arts Act Grant 2019. Silicon Synapse coincides with Fingal County Council’s Arts Office Public Art Programme focus on the developing Swords Cultural Quarter project.

Alan James Burns

Alan James Burns is a visual artist producing immersive sensory environments with mixed-reality technologies in site-specific locations reflecting on the inner psychological space by giving voices and consciousness to structures and systems. His projects to date have explored innovative, dialogical exhibition formats combining physical, virtual and sensory elements that enable collective experiences of technology, and generate awareness of climate change and mental wellbeing. Burns works highly collaboratively with other artists, writers, composers and technicians.

Recent projects include: ‘Open Mind, Closed System’ an interactive audio-visual artwork using a brain computer interface with generative imagery and audio, commissioned by Carlow Arts Festival 2021. An ambitious expansion of this work; ‘Augmented Body, Altered Mind’ has been commissioned by Carlow Arts Festival for their 2022 programme core funded by Arts Council Of Ireland Commissions Award and Arts and Disability Ireland Project Award. ‘Silicon Synapse’, a Virtual Reality experience conceived for the Carnegie Library in Swords, Fingal; redeveloped for JRC Milan, Italy and Bozar, Brussels, 2019; core funded by Arts Council of Ireland and jointly commissioned by Fingal Arts & European Commission. ‘Entirely hollow aside from the dark’, a sound installation produced inside caves commissioned by Fingal Arts 2016 and redeveloped for an Irish tour 2017 core funded by Arts Council of Ireland, North/South Co-Operation Fund & Creative Ireland. The first international presentation of this work took place at Creswell Cave, England, Aug 2019

Recent residencies include; Rapid Residency with Science Gallery Dublin, 2020; Research Residency with Hermes Artes Visuais, São Paulo, 2021; The Space Programme with the Performance Corporation at Tyrone Guthrie Centre 2019; Resonance Residency, JRC Milan, Italy and Seville, Spain, 2018-2020.

Artist(s)

Alan James Burns

Dates

09 November 2019 - 17 January 2020

Partners

Arts Fingal Cavan Arts RTE European Commission

Further Information

www.siliconsynapse.net

UPDATES

Future Plans

Leading on from this award, in early 2020, we were invited by Carlow Arts Festival to produce a new iteration of Silicon Synapse, which in turn lead to early developments of the project to be exhibited with Cavan Arts Office, Clare Arts Offices and Westival Arts Fesitval.

Due to the pandemic, these events were cancelled, however, these relationships were maintained and I have since been developing a number of projects including ‘The Walls’ an immersive audio and light installation for Cloughoughter Castle 2022 with Cavan Arts Office and Creative Cavan. I was also invited by Carlow Arts Festival 2021 to produce a project entitled ‘Open Mind, Closed System,’ involving Brain-Computer interface (BCI) technology and audio-installation, which in turn has lead to larger-scale commission for Carlow Arts Festival 2022, ‘Augmented Body, Altered Mind’, involving an immersive, projection-mapped environment with BCI. Through BCI, audiences will interact with a 360° projected environment that is connected to the rhythms of their live brain activity, creating individualised generative animating visuals that will be mapped onto a segmented, undulating structure that encloses and immerses them.

Legacy

The Open Call Award had a hugely significant impact on my practice in multiple ways. The support of the award allowed me to deliver a highly ambitious project to a level of technical proficiency that would not have otherwise been possible. It provided a unique opportunity for me to combine VR with spatial audio installation, a medium relationship not widely explored in multimedia practices. Through this project I also developed new skills in animation, virtual reality and set design, which now play a key role in the wider vocabulary of my work. This was achieved by providing the means to collaborate extensively with experts in these areas to enrich the work.

The award gave my professional practice a great deal of momentum and directly instigated a very fruitful relationship with the European Commission, who exhibited the work in Bozar, Brussels and JRC, Milan, thus increasing my practice’s international visibility. The award also allowed for the development of an extensive media campaign for the project, appealing to a wide cross-section of audiences across Ireland. Engaging communities with contemporary art that goes beyond typical gallery confinements, impacting participants on a personal level through immersive experience. This prompted various engagement with artists, students and researchers for this work and that have lead to the development of future projects, including ‘Augmented Body, Altered Mind’ 2022, Carlow Arts Festival. With the support of the Open Call Award, I created a dialogical, mixed-media, participatory experience that challenged conventional arts infrastructure and expanded on ideas that are deeply embedded in my practice relating to mental wellbeing, experiential art forms, individual agency and site-specificity. The scale and ambition of the project was beyond anything I had achieved before and it developed all aspects of my practice, from research methodologies to production, audience engagement and collaborations methods.

The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon

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Silicon Synapse

Open Call Award - € 76,880

Alan James Burns

UPDATES

Future Plans

Legacy

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