Drench (2017 & 2019)
Drench – Jools Gilson & Sebastian Adams (2017 & 2019)
Jools Gilson collaborated with composer Sebastian Adams to make the RTÉ experimental radio documentary The Rain Box for Lyric FM in 2017. The Rain Box was nominated for a New York Festivals World’s Best Radio Award for Sound Art in 2018. Gilson and Adams are now in the process of developing a series of umbrellas, which will tell stories and enfold you in sound when the rain falls. This new public art project is callee Drench and comprises a series of adapted umbrellas, which respond to precipitation / location and connect the presence, rhythm and ferocity of rainfall with tendrils of story and sound. A prototype of this new work was presented at CARPA6 at the University of the Arts, Helsinki in Aug 2019.
Drench explores climate through the practical fact, poetic resonance, and multiple meanings of rain in Ireland; the national pleasure of rain complaint, the nuanced descriptions of rain’s qualities, and the simple wonder at water pouring from the sky. Drench braids documentary footage, fairy tales, and Irish words for rain or rainy days, many of them no longer in use. This lost language of rainfall locates bodies and communities in a landscape of rain, light and wind. We’re interested in the connection between linguistic and environmental gestures inflected through different disciplinary forms. By doing this, Drench aspires to re-work the relationship between internal emotional worlds and environment as a way to engage in climate discourse.
Sebastian Adams Sebastian Adams https://www.cmc.ie/composers/sebastian-adams
(b. 1991) is an Irish composer, performer and artistic director with wide-ranging interests including experimental text pieces, early music and artificial intelligence. He was RTÉ Lyric fm’s Composer in Residence in 2016 – 17. Sebastian’s music has been performed in Montreal, Vienna, Cologne, Potsdam, Brussels, Antwerp and Görlitz, and broadcast across the European Union. He is also an important advocate for new music and his ensemble Kirkos has become a leading light of the Irish scene.