Journey into the space of zeros and noughts

This was the year of the great public art feeding frenzy. Making art outside of gallery spaces was, of course, not unknown here before this year. In 1997, however, something changed. In a cultural flip-flop that always seemed destined to happen, a branch of art that had been at the fringe suddenly found itself moving, not always comfortably, into the mainstream. Suddenly, money seemed to find its way into the area, and projects as different as Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stones's citywide installation of pink neon passages from Ulysses, For Dublin, and a vigil by Alastair MacLennan exploring the social impact of heroin, filled the streets of the capital. Among those who made or followed the trend were the Sculptors' Society of Ireland with its ambitious 22-artist show, Ireland and Europe, featuring impressive work from Irish sound artist Fergus Kelly and disarmingly delicate wind-powered sound sculpture from Max Eastley. At the other end of the spectrum was Temple Bar's more-than-curious Street Art Symposium, which, although it contained one or two pieces of engaging work, seemed to have found - all too quickly - the point of intersection of Eurodisney and street art. No wonder that when Temple Bar Galleries hosted a public debate on the subject, the heated and acrimonious event seemed to register deep misgivings among artists concerned about the emerging definition of public art in Ireland.

In 1997, if any artists were not busy tramping the streets looking for the perfect site for a public art intervention, then they were almost certainly making sorties into the exponentially expanding area of New Media.

One artist whose arrival in the digital domain proved particularly successful was Grace Weir. Weir, best known perhaps for her work in traditional sculptural media, took part in the show of graduate work from Ireland's first degree in Multimedia, at TCD, contributing one of the most sophisticated works of electronic art yet to emerge in Ireland. Weir's "and", an innovative combination of electronic installation and web site, linked with an immense interactive projection of a surprisingly unfamiliar Dublin roofscape.

Weir was not, however, the only artist attempting to jump the tracks into New Media. Digital Dimensions, an initiation programme run by Arthouse, saw a number of well-known Irish artists, including Alice Maher, Dorothy Cross, David Godbold and Michael Wilson, attempting similar journeys into the space of zeros and noughts. If few of these experiments produced entirely convincing work in time for the end-of-course show, the participation of these artists in digital projects goes a long way to making 1997 the year that the arts in Ireland, rather belatedly, got wired.

Notable among visiting artists was Gillian Wearing, who showed as part of IMMA's friendly and intriguing Projects show. Wearing's later victory in the Turner prize seemed to reawaken some sleeping giants, as the usual arguments about video art were marshalled and the usual voices cried out in wonder at the victory of such futile, flimsy non-art. Wearing's case was not helped, it seems, by the fact that she uses the same vernacular language as the film, television and advertising industries. Art, it seems - at least according to its more bumptious critics - should not be made in a language that is widely spoken.

Highlights: Jaki Irvine's slow, seeping sound and video installation, Another Difficult Sunset, and Alistair MacLennan's quiet memorial, Body of (D)Earth, made the Irish contribution to this year's Venice Biennale the quiet highlight of an often deadly and mostly overblown show. Lowlight: While artists seem to have taken increasing interest in the digital media and the World Wide Web, galleries, curators and arts publications seemed to have entirely lost interest. Nothing was so disheartening in 1997 as coming across yet another Irish art web site which had died on the vine, left unnourished and uncared for. You know who you are.

WISHLIST 1998 Next year holds the prospect of Arthouse finding the purpose it al- ways thought it had. The selection of Niall Sweeney, a designer and performance artist associated with running some of Ireland's most radical happenings, may prove to be exactly what the becalmed electronic arts centre needs. If all goes well, we can expect some odd times, and perhaps even queues at Arthouse events to equal those that Sweeney and company usually have lined up outside the Red Box. Next year sees the closure of the gallery of Dublin's Project Art Centre for 18 months. To compensate in some way for the loss, the centre is establishing a virtual art gallery to be launched early in the spring. This VAG will see artists such as Alice Maher and Trevor Knight, Almha Roche, Tina O'Connell, Fergus Kelly, Maurice O'Connell, Tony Patrickson, Michael Boran and James Dunbar creating work specifically for the Web.

As this includes sound and visual artists as well as a choreographer, 1998 promises a few surprises in a browser near you.