New works specially commissioned from Rob Canning and Roger Doyle form part of the National Library of Ireland’s major exhibition on ‘James Joyce and Ulysses’.

Following a submission and selection process in conjunction with the Contemporary Music Centre, Canning and Doyle have been commissioned by the Office of Public Works via Orna Hanly Architects and the National Library to write ten-minute electro-acoustic pieces which feature in two different sections of the exhibition.

Each area of the exhibition focuses on a different episode of Ulysses and the music commissions are among a series of original artworks commissioned across all art forms. Roger Doyle’s tape work, Frozen in Stereoscope, will be located in the Proteus area and makes use of new computer music software. Sounds are captured and frozen; time seems to slow down and 'freeze', as in a video freeze-frame. According to the composer, ‘It could be thought of as capturing a moment in time, a time one hundred years ago, where the harmonies of different musics from the period would appear to be smeared and abstracted from their original sources, but still retain their charm and poetry, like a faded blurred photograph’.

Rob Canning’s piece, Myriorama (7 Eccles Street), is located in the Penelope section. It uses innovative and complex sound design techniques to produce computer-generated music which is in constant flux and never repeats.

The National Library of Ireland begins a new chapter of its history with the opening of this exhibition on 14 June 2004 in a newly refurbished and enlarged exhibition facility in its Kildare Street premises. This inaugural exhibition, ‘James Joyce and Ulysses at the National Library of Ireland’, marks the centenary of Bloomsday, 16 June 1904, the day on which the events described in Ulysses are supposed to have taken place.

In 2001 the National Library acquired nineteen previously unknown James Joyce draft notebooks for 12.6 million and these form the centerpiece of the exhibition. The main aims are to show Joyce’s creative process and to introduce and explain the significance of Ulysses. The exhibition will appeal to a wide range of visitors, from those who have never read Joyce and remain sceptical of the view of him as the greatest writer of the twentieth century, to the Joyce aficionado and scholar.

Much of the graphic material has never been displayed in public before and is remarkable for its colourful and vivid representation of what is often perceived as the black and white world of turn-of-the-century Dublin.

Further information and bookings from the National Library of Ireland.

For information on other Joyce-related events in June 2004 please visit our Calendar and the ReJoyce Dublin 2004 Festival calendar.