Abstract:
This presentation focussed on the trans-disciplinary Artistic Research project Drench, whose iterations include a creative radio feature and a public art installation. Writer and performer Jools Gilson and composer Sebastian Adams developed the experimental radio documentary The Rain Box in 2017 for Lyric FM in Ireland. 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 presentation focused on the ways in which aspects of theatre and music composition navigate disciplinary boundaries of theatre, music, broadcast radio and participatory performance to engage world-making meaning production. Our new public art project 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. This paper documents the sharing of a prototype of this new work and the ways in which Drench elaborates the creative, theoretical and political implications of mobilising located fluidity through embodied storytelling.
