Dublin City Council Bram Stoker Festival announces the Irish premiere of Cygnus, a mysterious and poetic live installation on water that has captivated audiences worldwide.
Every evening into night, from Friday 27th October and Sunday 29th October inclusive, Grand Canal Dock will be home to Cygnus: a beautiful installation featuring 12 life-size, uncannily lifelike swans gliding in sync with music, their delicate pirouettes forming a mesmerising water ballet.
These robotic birds will come to life as dusk descends in a nighttime experience that will enthral and amaze.
Cygnus was created by Denis Bivour and Florian Giefer (LOOMALAND) from Berlin, Germany. Accompanying the installation will be a specially commissioned soundscape by Irish composer and artist Alma Kelliher.
The soundscape will be an ethereal journey of voice, synth and sound recordings, featuring inspiration from Irish mythology, our native Mute Swans, traditional Irish music and Bram Stoker himself. The music will tell its own story, as the soundwaves carry across the water in Grand Canal dock; haunting and beautiful, both uniquely Irish and otherworldly.
Illuminated from the inside, they glide on the surface like ghosts, changing their colour and light patterns according to the rhythm. As the dance unfolds, the swans start to “sing” in abstract patterns, their ethereal voices forming a poetic soundscape that will cut the night air.
Cygnus blends robotics and romance to create breathtaking formations that will awe viewers of all ages. It is a mind-blowing journey into the “uncanny valley” – a hypnotic experience that will make viewers look twice as they wonder what is real and what isn’t.
As an art piece, it prompts questions about the increasingly blurry boundaries between conventional reality and digital imagination in our world; the role art plays in the future and whether nature can be safeguarded or will it require future generations to create their own swans digitally?
This free experience, suitable for all ages, will spark awe and wonder in all who view it.