Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Culture File: Hugh MacDiarmuid

In a fisherman's cottage on the island of Whalsay, in Shetland, poet and Scottish nationalist, Hugh MacDiarmuid, wrote almost half of his work.

Monday, June 29, 2015

Culture File Weekly No. 24

This weekly, we are thinking about typewriters and wondering, why they're still a thing; and then with the help of Jerome McGann, we start to get ourselves ready for a post book world, and with Aisling Kelliher, prepare for everyday robots. Plus comedian, Sophie Hagen's coming out as a teenage writer of Westlife fanfiction, on this week's Weekly.

Culture File: The Death Of The Book?

Are we living in an age when the book as the key tool for defining & transmitting knowledge is drawing to a close?

Culture File: Addam's Family

That thing you missed about TV's The Addams Family? It's really a fable of neurodiversity, as much as a sitcom.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Culture File: #Westlife #fanfiction

At this year’s Edinburgh festival, comic Sophie Hagen is coming out as a writer of fan fiction - #Westlife #fanfiction.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Culture File: The Robots Are Coming

What if robots that lived among us weren’t a metaphor for anything - just fact of life?

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Culture File: The Typewriter

Gareth Stack grasps the sticky ribbon and attempts to track the every changing role of the typewriter.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Culture File Weekly No 23

This weekly we discover the surprisingly ancient tradition of sound branding - think church bells - we meet the two Marys, Wollstonecraft and Shelley, a literary tag team reunited in a new double biography, and we go to war in small, plastic tank.

Culture File: Mary Wollstonecraft's & Mary Shelley P2

Did Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark give birth to Romanticism?

Friday, June 19, 2015

Culture File Weekly No 22

This weekly, ships sail in and out of our stories, as we catch a glimpse of William Morris through a doorway in Ballyboden and on the Lido at Venice, meet Calvin Coolidge’s Kerry kitchen keeper in a parlour in Listowel and go big with UK saxophonist, Jason Yarde's 100-strong horn composition, Bold As Brass.

Culture File: Mary Wollstonecraft and Shelley P1

An uncanny mother and child reunion in Romantic Outlaws, a double biography of Marys Wollstonecraft and Shelley.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Culture File: Sound Branding

Why do so many of our possessions bleat, beep and chirrup at us? It's sound branding, says composer, John Groves.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Culture File: Small Plastic Wars

Pat McGrath's one man show, Small Plastic Wars, about a crisis in the life of one scale model maker returns.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Culture File: Sightless Cinema in UCD

White Cane Theatre prepare to take their work public in Sightless Cinema, a night of audio in a darkened cinema.

Monday, June 15, 2015

Culture File Weekly No 22

This weekly, ships sail in and out of our stories, as we catch a glimpse of William Morris through a doorway in Ballyboden and on the Lido at Venice, meet Calvin Coolidge’s Kerry kitchen keeper in a parlour in Listowel and go big with UK saxophonist, Jason Yarde's 100-strong horn composition, Bold As Brass.

Culture File: Odette Toilette & the scent of the now

Odette Toilette's Century of Scent ends with Justin Bieber & the smell of the now, Oud, wafting through the world.

Friday, June 12, 2015

Culture File: Kathy Buckley Cooking for the White House

Hail to the Chef! Kathy Buckley, the Kerry cook who ran the White House kitchens under three US Presidents.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Culture File: BIG Brass with Jason Yarde

British composer/saxophonist, Jason Yarde's "Bold as Brass" was created not for a Big Band, but by a massive band.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Culture File: William Morris

The Dublin legacy of activist-artist and proto-hipster admirer of the artisanal, William Morris.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Culture File: Composer James Wilson

The life & music of Islington-born Irish-based composer & teacher, James Wilson in a new study by Mark Fitzgerald.

Monday, June 8, 2015

Culture File Weekly No 21

This weekly playwright, Mark O’Rowe fights the Shakespeare flab to create a bite-sized bard for Galway's Druid, we "um" and "er" along with composer and lyricist, Adam Cork, who scored everyday speech for the play (and now film) London Road, and we head to West Cork on a wild yeast hunt.

Culture File: Odette Toilette's on Frédéric Malle

Odette Toilette on Ed. de Parfums Frédéric Malle where perfumers get top billing - even if sometimes posthumously

Friday, June 5, 2015

Culture File: Verbatim Musical, London Road

The UK National Theatre verbatim musical, London Road, is putting the real words of real people in the cinema.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Culture File: Fermenting in West Cork

Irish fermentation movement's "mother of the mothers" April Danann, on the wild yeasts of West Cork.

Culture File: Shakespeare Reduced with Mark O'Rowe

Boiling down Richard II, Henry IV (parts 1 & 2) and Henry V into a bite-sized 6 hours of theatre, with Mark O’Rowe.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Culture File Weekly No. 20

On this Weekly, some poems, along with a fishbox or two of slates removed (legally) from the former home of Peig Sayers, a wave of computers that really just want to know how you feel, the sight and the sound of the Golden Section and how to build new images of ageing.

Culture File - Odette Toilette on Perfume and Food

It's perfumes riffing on food from green tea to essence of candyfloss, as Odette Toilette sniffs the 90s in scent.