Cloudlands Artist Development Days

Helium’s Cloudlands project is well under way in hospitals in Dublin and Galway with artists Rachel Tynan and Emma Fisher collaborating with teenagers to develop arts and technology projects based on their interests and ideas. At the initial artist development days back in October, the artists worked with their mentor, Mark Storor, to develop ideas around some of their priorities and preoccupations for the second phase of the project. These included exploring how we can begin to collaborate between the two hospitals while also creating individual projects with participants, how we can move beyond the bedside to make the project more visible and to engage with more people within the hospital community and how we can work remotely with teenagers.

The image below shows the contents of a box put together last year with the artists’ hopes, apprehensions and expectations. This box was opened at the first Artist Development Day of Cloudlands Year 2.

The Cloudlands team is now in the midst of the second artists’ development sessions. These development days give the artists time to reflect on their work so far and to explore how their own practice connects with what’s happening in the hospitals as well as planning for the project’s development over the next few months. We’re also looking forward to further developing the collaborative aspects of the project through the dedicated Cloudlands site.

This year we are continuing to work with Fionnuala Conway and Mark Linnane, our tech collaborators. They and the artists spent a very productive day together in October sharing their aspirations for the technology development in this phase. Motion sensors, projections, mini motors and how sound can be used to create alternate interpretations of situations are all set to be explored this year. We’re also interested in exploring how the online space can mirror what’s going on in the hospitals – how we can connect the physical and the virtual and how it can support the artists and teenagers to collaborate across the two hospitals. It’s both exciting and challenging and we’re looking forward to developing the site into an active hub for all of our collaborators.

Check back later in February when we’ll be posting more news from the development days and launching our new online gallery!