Going out: the best of what’s on this week

Monday

Seeing: What are you looking at?
Alia Pialtos, McMullen-Winkler, Louisa Zahareas and Suki Chan. Science Gallery, Trinity College, Pearse St, Dublin Until September 25
dublin.sciencegallery.com
A veritable coven of curators – ophthalmologist Kate Coleman, computer engineer Gerry Lacey, neurobiologist Semir Zeki and gallery director Lynn Scarff – stirs up an interactive exploration of the process of seeing, but will we believe it? Eye contact, how computers see, the value of dimensions, eye movement and the role of sound in vision.

Tuesday

Saul Williams
Róisín Dubh, Galway 9pm €20/€18
roisindubh.net
There are few enough spoken- word performers or poets out there whose delivery ensures that their words mean that little bit extra, but rapper, singer- songwriter, musician, poet,Saul Williams (left) is one. Think a dramatic approach and verbal quick- wittedness mixed with rational activism, and you have a word-filled package that virtually explodes in your face. Nice.

Wednesday

Celtronic
St Columb's Hall, Derry 9pm £13.20
celetronicfestival.com
Tonight sees the best electronic music fest in the country press the start button for the 16th time. Over the next few days and nights, there will be a host of superb local and international acts making merry in the heart of Derry. Tonight's launch will be headlined by Berlin tech innovator Rødhåd with support from Edward and Phil Kieran in the main room while Room Two features Confute and reps from Bekuz, Jika Jika! and Zutekh crews.

David Crone: Echoes and Reflections
FE McWilliam Gallery & Studio, Banbridge, Co Down Until August 28
In his quiet, endlessly fascinating paintings, David Crone reminds us that the world we live in is not as orderly and coherent as we like to think, it's more something "patched up and somehow made to work". The strength of his work is that it embraces the strangeness, incongruity and ambiguity of the apparently familiar. Born in 1937, he is without question one of the finest painters to have emerged in Ireland.

An Chruit Abú
An Grianán, Termonfeckin, Louth 8pm €15, 01-6768998
This year's Irish Harp Festival rises to a gallop with this gala concert where harp, voice, fiddle and flute will swoop and soar. Harpist Laoise Kelly, along with flute player Cormac Breatnach and fiddler Tola Custy, in the guise of Albiez Trio headline tonight's concert, sharing billing with harper Siobhán Armstrong, sean nós singer Róisín Elsafty and Voice Squad veteran Gerry Cullen.

Proclaiming Self and Nation: Joyce's Portrait and the Easter Rising, 1916
National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2 7pm Adm free
nli.ie
Prof Luke Gibbons marks the anniversary of the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916 with a public lecture.

Thursday

Celtronic
Glassworks, Derry 9pm £11
celtronicfestival.com
A superb double-bill for Celtronic's second night out, even featuring the return of a storied homeboy from out foreign for the occasion. The Black Madonna (right) will rep Chicago, where her run as resident and creative director at the Smart Bar has turned that space into a ground-breaking club. Over in New York City, Derryman Eamon Harkin and partner Justin Carter put on the glitz with their Mister Saturday Night parties, events and releases. All the makings for a very special Celtronic event.

A Foreign Land
Claremorris Gallery, Co Mayo Until Jul 9
claremorrisgallery.com
In an introductory essay, Patrick Murphy pins down Peter Burns's intense, hallucinatory world, conjured up in heaps of brilliant colour. The "lone wayfarer" voyaging through its fabulist vistas struggles to comprehend an incomprehensible world. The iconographic tradition of western painting is melded with the likes of Robert Crumb and Charlie Chaplin. Fasten your seatbelts.

Rubén 'Chivo' González with Hugh Buckley & Richie Buckley
JJ Smyths, Dublin 9pm €10
jjsmyths.com
Saxophonist Rubén González is an old friend of the Buckleys brothers, appearing in The Living Bridge, a 2007 RTÉ documentary about the talented Dublin musical clan. Around that time, Hugh and Richie visited González in Argentina and played with him at the Jazz Festival of Rosario, spiritual home of the tango. Now González returns the favour for what promises to be a night of hard-swinging, heart- warming music.