Precipitative Verse 1: for (Boole);

Precipitative Verse 1: for (Boole);

This public artwork consisted of nine interconnected speakers that utilise LoRa technology to establish a mesh network. Each node, or speaker, is equipped with a raindrop sensor, allowing them to detect the presence of rainfall. Upon sensing the first raindrop during a shower, a node communicates with the network to determine how many other nodes are experiencing rain simultaneously. Based on this information, a geographically distributed poem is generated and dispersed among the activated speakers, encouraging collective interpretations and understanding. When all nine nodes are activated, the complete poem reads:

Perpetual,
River Flows,
Almost Above,
Collective Sense,
Saturating Here.

I created these 3D-printed, solar-powered, mesh-networked, raindrop-sensing, poem-generating speakers for Cork City, while thinking about the absurdity of one of the pillars of modern logic’s death and the sometimes questionable logic of how the climate emergency is being tackled in Cork.

Mathematician George Boole died at the age of 49 of pneumonia. He got caught in a rain shower on the way to work in what is now the University College of Cork. After developing a fever, his wife Mary Boole, who was a believer in homeopathy, thought that if she was to expose him further to what made him sick that he would recover.

After receiving buckets of water in bed, Boole died on the 8th December 1864.

(Photography by Jed Niezgoda)