Gaga and Your Body: Trinity's Science Gallery Opens Biorhythms show in New York

One of Ireland’s newest and most successful galleries has opened an exhibition in New York for the first time. The Science Gallery at Trinity College has attracted 750,000 visitors in the three years since it opened – far exceeding its target of 50,000 visitors a year. The gallery has a reputation or putting on exhibitions which make science more accessible to the general public.

“It was really a bit of an experiment by Trinity College,” explains Michael John Gorman, the gallery’s director. “Let’s find a new way for the university to engage with the city and to bring together science and the arts - to connect the Ivory Tower with all of the creative community around the university.”

One of those exhibitions was called Biorhythms: Music and the Body, and was seen by more than 60,000 people in Dublin last summer. It explores why our bodies react differently to hearing Lady Gaga and Beethoven. Now, it has opened at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Centre in Chelsea, Manhattan as part of the World Science Festival. It’s the first time that the Science Gallery has taken an exhibition overseas, and also the first time that the World Science Festival has ever invited an exhibition to participate in its program. “It’s a great honor to be the first one,” said Michael John Gorman, “For us, it’s exciting to be on the international stage.”

The exhibition is being supported by Imagine Ireland, the year-long promotion of Irish arts in the US by Culture Ireland.  “That’s a pretty great thing to be part of,” said Gorman, “It’s really thrilling to have the experimental mix between science and art suddenly being regarded as part of emerging Irish cultural activity.”

Singer Gavin Friday and composer Linda Buckley were among the curators of Biorhythm. Trinity Provost Dr John Hegarty travelled to New York for the launch last Friday, which saw a New York beat boxer and his band take part in a live experiment on stage, having their emotional and physical responses measured as they performed to see how music and the body interact. The exhibition runs until August, and the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center has planned a book launch, workshops and other events to run alongside it.

“It’s unusual for us to host an exhibition, but we were really excited about the possibility of this show” said Amanda McDonald Crowley, the center’s executive director. “We’re not a gallery for hire.  It wouldn’t make sense for us. We’re in Chelsea.  There are 389 galleries in a five block radius of us. We’re much more interested in the possibility for collaboration.”

The exhibition offers a chance to experiment with different kinds of installations. It includes the world’s largest research experiment on music and emotion, which is being conducted in collaboration with Queens University Belfast. “They’re actually using the visitors to the gallery as experimental subjects, and by attaching them to sensors for skin response and heart rate, they are testing how people respond to different types of music,” said Michael John Gorman. “And it’s a real scientific experiment, where they’re going to create this huge database. So one could imagine that being used for example in devising new sorts of musical experiences, which are tailored to your mental state, which is a next generation type of music.”

There are also a range of more playful installations – like a sonic bed which you can lie in and feel the music pulsing through your whole body, an acoustic armchair, a giant ear. There’s also the chance to create your own music and sounds. “I think what’s really interesting here is the combination – there’s a number of works that are really rather scientific in approach and there are some that are much more arty in their approach,” said Amanda McDonald Crowley of Eyebeam. “The idea of mixing up those works conceptually and thinking of sound in the context of both art and science, and where those ideas meet, that’s what’s really interesting for me.”

The Science Gallery hopes the event will lead to new links with international artists and scientists, with Dublin designated City of Science in 2012.

BIORHYTHM: MUSIC AND THE BODY at Eyebeam Art +Technology Center at 540 W 21st St runs til Aug6th. Open Tuesday-Saturday 12-6PM - admission free! CHELSEA

Camarata at Carnegie: Barry Douglas brings his Orchestra to NYC

World-renowned pianist Barry Douglas speaks to Vincent Murphy, ahead of his orchestra Camerata Ireland’s performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall next weekend.

Not every group can boast having the Queen of England and the President of Ireland as its joint patrons.

But Elizabeth II and Mary McAleese have both lent their seal of approval to Barry Douglas and his collection of fine Irish musicians. Camarata Ireland has been touring the globe since it was established in 1999, showcasing talent that is something of a hidden secret in its home country.

“While it’s rightly known for things like U2, the Chieftains, theater and poetry and so on, Ireland is not that well known for classical music,” says Douglas. “I thought the standard of musicianship was so fantastic, that surely if we put a few of our Irish musicians together they could form something really fantastic.”

And that’s just what Douglas did.

Camarata Ireland is an orchestra bringing together talented musicians from the whole island of Ireland. Most of them are young, in their 20s and 30s, but it’s not a youth orchestra, and there are also several established and accomplished members. But Camarata is also about more than music. It brings together musicians from across the political divide in Northern Ireland, and from North and South of the border.

“I think that musicians and artists in general can play a very important part in building bridges between communities,” says Douglas, who was born in Belfast. “I think it’s really important that artists speak up and say all the positive things that are already there. It’s not even creating anything new, there are so many positive things that have happened, and I think we as musicians can play a small part in that as well.”

It was this ambition that caught the eye of the two heads of State, Queen Elizabeth and President McAleese. “That was an acknowledgement and an approval in a sense. They saw that we are trying to understand, trying to create a bit of harmony in a musical sense and a social sense that they approved of it. It was and still is an amazing privilege to have both of them on board.”

The orchestra enjoys a busy touring schedule and has played China, Poland, Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany. It was the first Irish classical music ensemble to play Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. They will appear at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on March 5^th, on the first stop of its fourth US tour. They will also visit Nashville, Tennessee; Carbondale and River Forest, Illinois; Carmel, Indiana and Winter Park and Sarasota, Florida during this visit to the United States.

And Barry Douglas is planning to treat audiences to “a nice mix”.  “We didn’t go for just a solid classical program. I wanted to highlight the Irish nature of the orchestra,” he said. “We are not pretending to be the Chieftains or anything, but I think there is something we can do to express our culture in our particular kind of style.”

The program includes two John Field’s Nocturnes (#1 and #5), which were written for piano, but which Douglas has arranged for piano and orchestra. There will also two Mozart pieces – Porgi Amor from the Marriage of Figaro, and Piano Concerto No 23 in A Major. And there will also be a unique opportunity to hear Bunting’s Druid Dances. “In 1792 there was a huge harp festival in Belfast, organized by a guy called Bunting,” explains Douglas, “and he wrote down all the old Irish melodies. The harpists came from all over Ireland. I’ve incorporated five of those into a set of a suite of dances, from a lamentation to a planxty to a lullaby. I’ve orchestrated that for the orchestra as well.”

The tour also features Ireland’s internationally acclaimed soprano Celine Byrne as a guest artist, and audiences can look forward to renditions of My Lagan Love, Carrickfergus and Last Rose of Summer. Byrne has collaborated with all the modern greats like Jose Carrerras, Roberto Alagna and Andrea Bocelli. “She is fabulous. We worked together a couple of years ago with the National Symphony of Ireland for RTE Television and I was so impressed with her poise and her ability to transcend all sorts of styles,” says Douglas.

Byrne and Douglas both represent the cream of Ireland’s classical music talent. Douglas has enjoyed a major career since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. He is in demand across the world and has performed with such leading orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and all the major London orchestras. The 2010-11 season includes his return to the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, and solo performances in Germany, Ireland, Britain, France, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Italy, Singapore, China, Thailand, Holland, Spain and the US. He will return to the Proms in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra to perform the premiere of a new concerto written for him by Kevin Volans in celebration of his 50th birthday. 

Despite the hectic schedule, he remains passionately committed to Camarata Ireland, and showcasing the phenomenal talent of Ireland’s classical musicians. “The following for Irish traditional culture is very strong, and rightly so,” he says. “But I think some of these musicians deserve to be recognized by a broader public – be that an international public, Irish-American public or Irish public at home. We need to treasure our own musicians, and our own people that achieve something, and make sure they have a name abroad as well.”