Danny McCarthy was commissioned by Triskel Arts Centre to create a work for their 2016 celebrations. The commission was open in concept but was to be presented in Triskel Christchurch.

In January 2016 McCarthy along with fellow Quiet Club artist Mick O’Shea travelled for six weeks by invitation of the Rauschenberg Foundation to Captiva Florida where Robert Rauschenberg’s  studios are situated and there were given access to all the facilities of this vast complex including the on site technicians..

Whilst there McCarthy started work on his new Triskel commission. He started by writing a series of Mesostics using the names of all the 1916 leaders and using the Proclamation as the main text.

Mesostic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mesostic is a poem or other typography such that a vertical phrase intersects lines of horizontal text. It is similar to an acrostic, but with the vertical phrase intersecting the middle of the line, as opposed to beginning each new line.

The practice of using index words to select pieces from a preexisting text was developed by Jackson Mac Low as "diastics". It was used extensively by the experimental composer John Cage (Walsh 2001).

There are two types of mesostic: fifty percent and one hundred percent. (See also below the example.)

·         In a fifty-percent mesostic, according to Andrew Culver (John Cage's assistant), "Between any two [capitalized] letters, you can't have the second [letter]." ^[1]

·         In a one-hundred-percent mesostic, "Between any two [capitalized] letters, you can't have either [letter]." ^[2]

Below, an example of a one-hundred-percent mesostic:

        KITCHEN

 

  let us maKe

      of thIs

      modesT

        plaCe

    a room Holding

tons of lovE

 

Also in the Rauschenberg tradition he made a series of collages again using the “Proclamation” as source material. These became both text compositions and visual works in their own rights. He also completed a series of paintings inspired by Rauschenberg’s work of the “Erased De Kooning Drawing ” where he painted out the Proclamation there by erasing it.

These works are now being presented in Triskel. The sound work is programmed and presented in a totally indeterminate way so that it will never sound the same no matter how many times one visits it. Each hearing of the work is totally unique to the time of the visit and your place within the space and will continue to change with every visit therefore each visit is a new sonic opera. Using the voices of Bernard Clarke, Arthur Crawford Clarke, Sophie Kellegher. Joan McCarthy, Ronan McCarthy. Irene Murphy, Tony Sheehan amongst other the work is whilst café fully scripted and recorded is presented so that each new hearing offer’s a new reading of the Proclamation forcing the listener to re interpret  the proclamation once again for oneself.