Ars Electronica Festival, Austria — 2025, Beta Festival, Ireland — 2025.
Foolish Flame is a trans-disciplinary piece that explores the fraught frontiers of climate change and our inherited cultural trauma. Through collective experience and real-time generative technology, visitors witness an evolving landscape of environmental narratives. Traversing between the liminal space of the bog and a realm beyond, Foolish Flame unfolds as a dynamic storytelling system, conjuring new digital rituals of connection, synchronicity, and ecological reflection.
Commissioned through Ars Electronica and the SHARESPACE programme and explores the fraught frontiers of climate change and inherited cultural trauma through a unique convergence of performance, machine learning, interactive avatars, and immersive spatial design. It merges live audience agency into a dynamic storytelling system, creating new digital rituals of connection, synchronicity, and ecological reflection.
Head Creative Technologist: Cailean Finn
Artistic & Technical Collaborator: Aisling Phelan
Digital Asset Design: Neonatus
Choreographer: Robyn Byrne
Uilleann Pipe and Voice: Muireann Ní Shé
Executive Producer: Maura O'Keeffe
Creative Producer: Aisling Murray
Line Producer: Miles Harrigan
This Artwork is realised by Leon Butler and Peter Powerand co-commissioned by Ars Electronica and the SHARESPACE project.
Partners: Beta Festival, Culture Ireland, The Digital Hub, Project Arts Centre
