PROTEUS

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PROTEUS
The ineluctable modality of the visible

The continuing story of artist Artie Doyle

Proteus is a meditation on place which takes place as our protagonist, Artie travels on the DARTcommuter train into Dublin a journey which takes him past Sandymount strand. For a few minutes on this journey you can see the strand, the sea and the sky then you are plunged once again into the heart of the city. This episode is set against the background of the train's movement as Artie's thoughts in the form of images of place and notebook sketches are made manifest.

In Homer’s Odyssey Menelaus struggles to hold down the shape shifting god Proteus to force him to reveal his true nature. In the Proteus chapter of Ulysses Joyce first reveals his stream of consciousness technique with the everchanging flow of Stephen Dedalus’s thoughts as he walks on Sandymount Strand. Stephen muses on how the method of perception alters the reality of what is perceived and closes his eyes to open himself to auditory experience.

Background
The project is part of a non-linear episodic narrative work in progress which follows artist Artie Doyle on his travels through Dublin, each episode corresponds to a chapter in Joyce's Ulysses, This is the second episode of eighteen, the first episode was Cyclops.

While on first appearence the scenes have a realistic look,it is soon obvious that they are purely digital creations. The Dublin that is presented in these narratives is an enhanced city, a city of grand gestures and declamatory statements where the inner life of the citizens, their thoughts, hopes and desires become manifest in the streetscape and the fabric of the city like a contemporary take on pathetic fallacy. As Joyce's stream of consciousness revealed the inner lives of ordinary Dubliners these narratives seek to reveal the creative processes of our protagonist, Artie Doyle, an artistic everyman and to connect him to both the physical city and the iconic Joycean city where the strands of history and culture bind us to the past.

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