Received at the Graveyard (2025) is a sound piece broadcast over FM radio, first presented at Ormston House in Limerick during EVA International. Within the gallery, it unfolds as a quiet zone of transmission, a space that listens as much as it speaks. On set occasions, its signal is extended beyond the building, carried to a nearby graveyard where it can only be heard within range. The work moves between presence and absence, between the living and the dead, its voices carried through the invisible aether of radio frequencies, seeking an ear in the static.

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At its core are possibly the only surviving recordings of traditional Irish keening, recorded in the mid-1940's. These recordings are rare, fragile remnants of a tradition that has now all but disappeared. From these few traces, a new AI model has been trained especially for Received at the Graveyard to reproduce and re-imagine the sound of keening, the raw and improvised lament once performed by women to guide the dead toward the afterlife. These voices, long suppressed by the Catholic Church’s wish for order and restraint, return here as signal, neither fully human nor fully machine. The piece traces a careful balance between technology and memory, allowing the digital model to extend an extinct human tradition without erasing its origin. At times the voice breaks through the frequency, trembling and clear; at others only the slow hiss of radio static fills the space, like breath returning to air.

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As the signal endures over time, new keening songs are generated continuously, weaving in other forms of lament from different cultures from around the world. The sound evolves, forming a living archive of loss and transformation. A new voice that speaks from the fusion of archive, aether and machine learning, lilting into the future for the dead, and those who come to visit them.

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RATG Is developed in close collaboration with Ormston House in artistic exchange with director and curator Pádraic E. Moore.

I am grateful for his vision, imput and guidance throughout the process. 

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