Pallas Projects - Aoibheann Greenan

Aoibheann Greenan—The Ninth Muse

Opening night: 6–8pm Thursday 2nd November
Performance: An Invocation to the Ninth Muse will be performed at 7pm by a femme chorus
Register here

Exhibition continues: Friday 3rd–Saturday 18th November
Pallas Projects are delighted to partner with Beta Festival: An element of The Ninth Muse will be exhibited at The Digital Depot, Bay 1

Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Aoibheann Greenan—The Ninth Muse, the final exhibition of our 2023 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.

The Ninth Muse speculates the creative and social ramifications of brain-machine interfacing, drawing inspiration from the Nine Muses of ancient Greek mythology. The exhibition navigates the parallels between AI and the muse, a commonly cited metaphor that obscures the corporate influence in our product interactions. The work centers on the 'Muse' headband, a consumer-grade brain-machine interface employing EEG neurofeedback to enhance meditation. Greenan envisions the potential for such technology to infiltrate our unconscious minds, offering feminist strategies to counter corporate entanglements.

Greenan situates 20th-century surrealist techniques for hacking the unconscious as a precursor to the current surge of neurotechnologies in the consumer market. The installation updates Dalí's hypnagogic sleep method by situating the Muse headband above an automated office chair, which drops keys to trigger imaginative material.* Through a process akin to Dalí’s Paranoiac-critical method, Greenan has made a series of collage drawings that provide the gateway to the exhibition's titular video piece.*

A giant, mutable sculpture, inspired by neural architecture, becomes a canvas for performers to probe and manipulate, while its chromakey-patterned surface integrates a stream of AI-generated imagery. The soundscape weaves in an invocation to the ninth muse, Calliope, taking cues from various feminist texts. This script prompts the AI to modify the imagery as a poet recites, resulting in a series of monstrous mutations. Glitches, stemming from the artist's Muse-driven brainwave fluctuations, intermittently disrupt the image, repurposing the headband as a tool for both artistic augmentation and corporate resistance. This invocation will be performed live on the opening night.

*Dalí would nap in an armchair, holding a set of keys above a metal plate, whereupon the sound of them falling would awaken him with imaginative material for his work.

*Dalí would combine multiple disparate images into one, to stimulate in himself and the viewer ‘a delirium of interpretation’.

Join Aoibheann Greenan and AlanJames Burns for a conversation that will span the convergence of art and neurotechnology, as it relates to each of their artistic practices and a broader discussion of the work in The Ninth Muse exhibition.

Aoibheann Greenan is an Irish artist working across moving image, performance, installation, sculpture, costume and drawing. Her theatrical stagings pull at the seams of our commodified experiences, allowing aberrant or repressed material to bleed out. Works have explored neuromarketing, psychedelic tourism and unboxing videos, warping their delivery through darkly humorous rituals and narratives.

These 'counter spells' deliberately amplify coercive mechanisms to confront viewers with their mediated attention. Videos shapeshift into live performances, sets into costumes, drawings into sculptures. Strange loops emerge across digital culture, mythology, neuroscience and esotericism, eliciting patterns of thought and behavior that persist throughout time.

Pallas Projects are delighted to partner with Beta Festival for their inaugeral year. Beta is a new festival of art and technology critically engaging with the impact of emerging technologies on society. Taking Ireland’s role as a central node in today's wired world as a starting point, Beta will showcase and celebrate Ireland’s research and artistic communities through a combination of creativity, debate and experimentation. Beta will allow members of the public to engage playfully and critically with new technologies essentially beta testing ethical issues facing society.

Please note this exhibition utilises LED's, moving image and features a loud soundtrack.

Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 8 x 3-week exhibitions taking place from March-November 2023. This unique programme of funded, artist-initiated projects selected via open call is highly accessible to artists, with a focus on early career, emerging artists and recent graduates. Projects are supplemented with artists' talks, texts, workshops or performances, and gallery visits by colleges and local schools.

Image description: Pencil on paper, drawing of various creatures mirrored on both sides, split apart by a green shape in the form of a questionmark. In the forefront blue text reads 'Artist-Initiated Projects. Aoibheann Greenan.'