We’re Returning to Celtworld.
During my research, I stumbled upon Celtworld, an educational theme park that existed in the seaside town of Tramore, Waterford from 1992-95. The park is exemplary the Ireland of the time, intwined with issues of corruption but also representing the emergence of a modern, increasingly outward-looking society. Here, one can see the seeds of the Celtic Tiger begin to germinate. The first indication of a society that would enjoy (unequally shared) riches, before totally losing its head in a haze of speculative property development and Ryanair flights to the Algarve.
Upon finding Celtworld, I felt I had hit gold. My work was focusing on the postcolonial context which informs Ireland’s relationship both to the world and its own history. I was interested in Maeve Connoly’s examination of Joep Leerssen’s work on 19th-century Celticism, which describes a Gaelic Ireland “inherently characterised by its pastness” and “configured as a living fossil” (p.253). A society whose national myths have become exoticized and othered due a loss of language and culture. My suspicion was that this othering laid the groundwork for such cultural artefacts to be sold back to us (from within or abroad) in commercialised forms. I could not have wished for a more potent symbol for such a relationship than Celtworld.
I decided to emulate the work of Paul McClean, a software developer who has been using the AI text-to-image generator MidJourney to recreate the long-since defunct Dundalk Shopping Centre. Whereas Paul’s recreation is based upon his own personal memories of the place, I decided mine would build upon the real-world experiences of those who had visited Celtworld.
In this way, the project began to mirror my previous work for Unit 1 : Methods of Investigating which had focused on networked notions of space. Building upon this, the new project played with notions of memory and biography.
This turned out to be a more difficult task than I had anticipated. No only is there sparse information about Celtworld online, but finding people willing to be interviewed proved a challenge necessitating much persistence.
Another early observation was that AI programmes such as Dall-E 2 are not great at specifics. They are very useful, however, in establishing a general mood – particularly when working within a framework of disposable camera aesthetics (as shot by a child in the 90s).
McClean, Paul (2022) Untitled [AI Imagery]. Available at: https://twitter.com/PaulMcDirt/status/1569776953648979980 (Accessed: 27 September 2022).
Moynihan, Karyn. (2012 Celtworld: Where Mythology Met Lasers. Available at: https://wheresgrandad.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/celtworld-where-mythology-met-lasers/(Accessed: 27 October 2022).