ebban an’ flowan: a poetic primer for marine renewable energy

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Alec Finlay recently announced the publication of ebban an’ flowan: a poetic primer on marine renewable energy.  More information below:

ebban an’ flowan
a primer for marine renewable energy
Alec Finlay and Laura Watts, with Alistair Peebles
pb, 56 pages, morning star, 2015; edition of 500 copies

Ebban an’ flowan is the world’s first poetic primer on marine renewable energy. The book focuses on the Orkney islands, as the leading international test site for this nascent energy industry, and expands to reflect on its relationship with the Nordic countries across the sea.

Through both language and technology, the book explores how use is inflected with locality. A number of tide and wave energy devices are illustrated, some in dock, others in the sea, along with an anthology of their characterful names–mixing humour with invocations of classical myth and metamorphosis.

Ebban an’ flowan explores the technical and mythic vocabulary which is evolving alongside marine energy devices. The book offers a unique, creative perspective on this social and technical world by gathering together maritime dialect expressions from across the Norse languages, connecting the older lore of the sea with the new lore of ocean energy generation. An innovative range of poems, maxims, and dictionaries connect tide and wave engineers with the older wisdom of mariners, fisherfolk, and mythic selkies or tangies, to suggest how a language of marine energy may, in some imagined future, grow from words, lodged in collective memory.

Languages also have their tides: the energy of speech, as its sound rises and lulls, is always ebban an’ flowan.

The project is inspired by ongoing social research in collaboration with people and places around marine energy in Orkney, conducted as part of the Alien Energy project at the IT University of Copenhagen.

ebban-an-flowan-image

Laura Watts - writer, poet, ethnographer of futures, and Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen; a writer who brings together the academic and poetic to imagine the future otherwise.

Alec Finlay - poet and artist; he has produced art and writing on all forms of renewable energy since 2005.

Alistair Peebles - artist and writer; the book includes his photographs of installations on Orkney, and a text work.

Price
10.00 GBP
13.00 EUR

ISBN: 978-1904477150

To get your copy please email info@alecfinlay.com, visit amazon.co.uk, or visit the bookshop at alecfinlay.com

Read more on Alec’s blog.

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

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