ANU, Landmark Productions & Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLi)
Ulysses 2.2: 1 Book. 1 Year. 18 Artistic Experiments
“What would a brain scan of a Joyce reader look like? What happens between mind and page?”
—Anne Enright, The Irish Times
the wandering i is an interactive audio-visual experience which uses eye-tracking software and responsive soundscape to show your unique reading of Ulysses.
We take our reading skills for granted, but it is not actually a plodding business of looking at one word and then the next - reading is a dance of difficulty, interest and delight. Our eyes skip and pirouette across the sentences, while our brains fill in the blanks.
And Ulysses is full of blanks: it is full of things we don’t entirely understand. Joyce demands that we figure things out for ourselves so, more than any other book, Ulysses happens in the reader’s head. This makes it a profoundly democratic work. Each unique reading makes Ulysses bigger, by the choices we make and the meanings we take, as our eyes move across the page.
First presented at the Museum of Literature Ireland in 2022 to celebrate the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Curated by Anne Enright
Voice actors: Anne Enright, Colm Lennon, Doireann Ní Bhriain & Anthony Nolan
Digital Producer: Hugh Farrell
Eye-Tracking Technician: Seán Higgins (Future Proof Insights)
Videography & Visuals: Ben O’Neill & Christos Celniku (Future Proof Insights)
Software Developer: Dakota Stipp
Sound Designer: Tyler Kieffer
Sound Engineering & Recording: Ian Dunphy
Producers: Lynnette Moran & Matthew Smyth | ANU; Anne Clarke | Landmark Productions; Simon O’Connor | MoLI
Artistic Directors: Louise Lowe & Owen Boss | ANU
Curatorial Assistant: Katie Mishler
Head of Operations: Mark O’Neill
Marketing Officer: Laura Harvey-Graham
Digital Curator: Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Production Manager: Ste Bourke
Project Manager: Gráinne Pollak
PR: Sinéad O’Doherty
Design: CI Studio
Supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle
Ealaíon's Open Call Award and Dublin City Council.
“I left under a spell of catharsis and hugged a stranger”
—Peter Crawley, The Sunday Times
The Telegraph ★ ★ ★ ★
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A contemporary confessional for the modern sinner. A space to listen and be heard, away from the digital divide.
WITHOUT SIN is an intimate interactive experience for an audience of two, created by an award-winning team of designers, architects and theatre-makers. Enter the box with a friend, partner, relative or – better yet – a stranger, and be guided into conversation by light, sound, and a simple question.
Reclaiming the penitential rite as a non-judgmental exercise in reflection and healing, WITHOUT SIN invites you to consider our relationships with one another and the places that cultivate connection between us.
Created by: Unqualified Design Studio
Co-creators: Shane Sugrue, Hugh Farrell, Bláthnaid Conroy, Barry Todd, Josh Wilkinson and Amy Learmonth
Architect: Shane Sugrue
Dramaturgy and Voiceover: Hugh Farrell
Industrial Design and Fabrication: Barry Todd (Studio Kinnard)
Sound and Interaction Design: Josh Wilkinson
Art Direction: Bláthnaid Conroy
Design Manager: Amy Learmonth
Photography: Ste Murray
Presented at Another Love Story, Dublin Fringe, Carlow Arts, Clonmel Junction and Edinburgh Fringe festivals.
Nominated for the First Fortnight Award at the Dublin Fringe Festival which celebrates work that challenges stigma and prejudice about mental health through art.
Funded by the Arts Council/An Chomhaírle Ealaíon, Culture Ireland, Dublin City Council, Dublin Fringe Festival's Make Space for Art Fund, the Office of Public Works (OPW), Dublin Castle and Dulux.
“A fulfilling, singular and even sometimes profound experience”
—Brandy McDonnell, The Oklahoman
Part flash mob, part silent disco, part Mass—OF A MIND is a guided tour of your community.
Set to a score of local stories, sounds, and music, audiences of up to 50 at a time are brought on a journey through often-missed parts of their environment in an exploration of mindfulness, urban ecology and social interactions.
Audiences are kept in sync with each other through their own smartphone and headphones.
Meditative, immersive, and informed by the latest in mind-body research, audiences dive deeply into the mystery of our minds as we step into rhythm with our breath and take a trip through the collective consciousness.
Created by Listen and Breathe (Hugh Farrell and Tyler Kieffer) in collaboration with Hui Cha Poos, Kelly Kerwin, Kevin McNamara, Emily Reilly, and Emily Zemba.
Original Music: Kevin McNamara
Videos: Alan Fisher (Bray), Dan Fowler (Dún Laoghaire), and Caleb Germany (Oklahoma).
Photos: Rosie Barrett, Brid O’Donovan
First commissioned by Mermaid Arts Centre in 2020 with support from the Arts Council of Ireland, Creative Ireland, and Wicklow County Council.
Subsequently commissioned in 2022 by Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre for their ReBoot season, and again to celebrate the Pavilion Theatre’s 21st Season with support from Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.
ANU, Landmark Productions & Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLi)
Ulysses 2.2: 1 Book. 1 Year. 18 Artistic Experiments
‘When Joyce was writing, and when I was a kid, the only place you could really see the whole of Dublin from was the top of Nelson’s Pillar. Joyce imagined it as being like the mountaintop in the Bible from which Moses can see the promised land. I had never before seen the city from a vantage point so high. It was like you owned the place, like, at that moment, the city really belonged to you and you to it.’
— Fintan O’Toole
Promised Land is a Virtual Reality experience exploring themes of memory, commemoration and the abandoned promises of a brighter future.
Hosted in the public office of the General Post Office, once the heart of Dublin city, Promised Land is an opportunity to travel back in time to view Joyce’s Dublin from atop the long-since destroyed Nelson’s Pillar.
Curated by Fintan O'Toole
VR Creation by Viko Nikci, Sean Burns and Jonny Garvey
Sound design: Josh Wilkinson
Digital Producer: Hugh Farrell
Launched on Culture Night at the GPO in September 2022.
Supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle
Ealaíon's Open Call Award.
Every Year I Grow Again
Twelve audience members, seated for dinner, taste their way through a seasonally-harvested, locally-sourced meal.
Cooked by world class chefs Kevin Thornton (Ireland), Jake Reynolds (Ireland), and Greg Markolis (Nantucket Island) and guided by the voices of the famers, fishers, brewers and bees who grow our food, a story unfolds of how we grow from what grows.
To create the experience Listen and Breathe travelled to oyster farms, chicken farms, organic farms and wind farms, talked the ears off hunters, fishers, foragers and fermenters, and got their hands dirty with bakers, butchers, brewers and beekeepers to revel in the mystery of our favourite ritual: eating together.
Created by: Listen and Breathe
Collaborators: Hugh Farrell, Nicholas Hussong, Tyler Kieffer, Jake Reynolds, Greg Margolis, Kevin Thornton.
Photos: Nick Hussong
Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and first produced by New Neighborhood on Nantucket Island, 2018.
an artificially intelligent opera
Composer Matthew Suttor, and an international team of theatre designers and computer programmers, are creating an opera about Artificial Intelligence.
I AM ALAN TURING draws on cryptography, mathematics, AI, and Turing’s fascination with natural patterns in the universe, to present a new model for creating opera in the age of information.
The team have trained an instance of Open AI’s GPT2 natural language model on everything Turing wrote and read in his life and collaborate with this Turing-esque model to generate the libretto.
Music is created by analog synthesisers sequenced to reproduce mathematical series like the Prime and Fibonacci numbers, while visual design is drawn from Turing's later discoveries of the chemical basis for life - morphogenesis.
I AM ALAN TURING leverages artificial intelligence to understand what it means to be human.
Are you ready to take the test?
Created by Listen&Breathe
Presented at Live Collision Festival, Dublin, 2018.
Which eye are you reading with? Is anyone around you? Let your shoulders go.
Stand in your self as immersive theatre makers Listen&Breathe lead you on a journey to your soul with their latest audio headphone experience at Live Collision Festival 2018.
One at a time every 10 minutes starting from Project Arts Centre box office.
A hero’s journey into mindfulness.
A pair of audience members, guided in headphones, set off on an interactive adventure designed to deepen their relationship with themselves, each other and their environment.
Originally created as a commission for Body&Soul Festival in 2016, we recreated new iterations for Another Love Story in 2017 and Clonmel Junction Festival in 2018.
Every iteration becomes its own experience as we soak up the atmosphere of each new location.
Created by Listen&Breathe
Video by Rosie Barrett
Presented at Body & Soul, Another Love Story and Clonmel Junction festivals.
A portrait of a woman on edge.
You’ve come to a show at 7am. It's early and she is going somewhere. She has something she needs to do. And you’re going to follow her through the quiet streets of Dublin City tuned to her thoughts through your headphones.
This guided audio performance premiered at Dublin Fringe Festival in 2022.
Funded by the Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sports and Media and Dublin City Council. Development supported by the Abbey Theatre Engine Room initiative, Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Programme. Development at FRINGE LAB.
Woman voiced by Ingrid Craigie
Songs sung by Stella McCusker
Live performance by Aoife McAtamney
Text, music & songs by Zoe Ní Riordáin
Directed by Blaise Quinn
Produced by Hugh Farrell
Poster Image by Tony Murray
Photos by Ros Kavanagh
