TULCA Festival of Visual art is collaborating with artist Louise Manifold and the Galway Marine Institute in Rinville for a special project as part of this year’s Sea-Fest, which will kick off in late June.
The event is part of the TULCA OFFshore programme, an initiative that helps promote Ireland’s maritime heritage and identity.
Louise is working with fourth-class students at Cregmore National School on a visual art and science project entitled Build your own Unknown.
Students will create an installation and a short film re-enacting the Irish-led marine scientific discovery of the Moytirra deep-sea hydrothermal vent field, the first to be explored along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, north of the Azores, in 2011
Moytirra was named after a mythological Irish battlefield (meaning plain of pillars). This unique eco-system, 3,000 metres under the sea, consists of gigantic rock formations, lava vents over ten metres high, and unusual marine species.
“Learning through the arts encourages reflective thinking, problem solving, decision making, self-expression, experimentation and communication,” she says.
The project will also result in an art-science project module, lesson plans and resources for the Marine Institute’s Explorers Education Programme. These will be available on www.explorers.ie later this year.
Build your own Unknown video and installation will be shown at SeaFest which runs from June 30-July 2 in Galway.
- Galway Connacht Tribune,connachttribune.ie/art-project-exploring-secrets-ocean/