THE TOP OF Graton St has no shortage of photo opportunities.
There are the hanging gardens of St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, the Roman arches of the park itself and the Gaiety Theatre.
Since the start of October, the touristic appeal of the street has been bolstered further by the addition of a big sculpture officially known as The Dublin D — standing 2.7 metres high, 2.3 metres wide,
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According to the council’s press release: “The contemporary sculpture is inspired by Dublin’s distinctive brand mark and creates a new visual landmark in the heart of the capital. It celebrates the people, places and qualities that make Dublin a dynamic, creative and welcoming region in which to live, work, invest, study and visit.”
It’s a big claim. It’s a lot to ask, even of such a big D.
On Wednesday morning, I decided to visit The Dublin D and see if it was really delivering on its stated aims.
For a few minutes after I arrived, nobody approached the D. The primary disadvantage of the Dublin D, for the purposes of my specific research, is that there’s really no spot nearby where you can peep at it without looking like some kind of flasher.
As time ticked by, I considered doing what I could to artificially inflate interest, perhaps by standing beside it and loudly saying something like ‘Wow, what an effective way to celebrate the people, places and qualities that make Dublin a dynamic, creative and welcoming region in which live, work, invest, study, and of course, visit — money well spent’, but thankfully it wasn’t long before people did begin to interact with the D.
Eventually, two young female students passed by the sculpture and I saw one of them pointing at it and saying “€83,000″, referring to the reported cost of the sculpture. These two students were absolutely not happy to be stopped by me in the middle of their day (I wouldn’t really want to be), but they were kind enough to give me a quote each. One said “I think it’s stupid” and the other said “I think the money could have been better spent on something else”.
I arrived at 11.27am and decided to stay for half an hour. Over that time I collected the following data. Two couples stopped by the D to take photos of each other and together. One family of four stopped to take a photo of one of their children with the sculpture. Four more families of different sizes took photos either of each other with the D, or simply of the D without any human presence. One woman took photos of the park, the shopping centre, and Grafton Street, but did not take a photo of the D. Almost pointedly.
I won the trust of the first couple by offering to take a photo of them with the D, after which I sprung on them my selfish, ulterior, quasi-mainstream-media motive. I asked them if they were impressed by the D and to be fair to the woman, she said yes. In fact, she told me that when she made a little photo booklet of her trip that the photo of them in front of the D would be ‘on the cover’. This was a very nice sentiment, but the couple was Canadian, and I did wonder if they were being so nice because they thought I had some kind of personal investment in the D and that my feelings would be hurt if they disparaged it. D-sparaged it, if you will.
Of the second couple I asked whether they liked the sculpture. The man shrugged. When I asked if they thought it was worth €83,000, it became clear that he was shrugging because he didn’t speak English and didn’t understand what I was asking.
All-in-all, I saw just over 20 people interact with the D over the course of 30 minutes coming up to midday in October, just as a storm is about to fall. It’s not nothing. Tourists will take photos with it. They’ll put those photos on their Instagram pages. Other prospective tourists will see them and they’ll probably come and do the same thing.
Sure, you might argue that tourists will take pictures with anything these days, but that’s not Dublin City Council’s fault. Is it patently silly to suggest that a giant D containing all the letters of the word Dublin spelled out in squares with each square representing the six crucial components of Dublin (bronze, foliage, oak, music, water and mirror?) actually communicates some idea of the city as wonderful place to live? Yes, of course.
But does it do the job of giving tourists a landmark to meet at, stand next to and take pictures of? That it does, my friend.
Overcome with the spirit of celebrating my city’s dynamic brand activation, I decided to swing by one of the other recently-added monuments to our welcoming-creative- investment-work-innovation-utopia-where-everyone-can-afford-to-live-and nobody-ever-hates-it-here: the Dublin portal.
I’d been told by my colleagues that people still visit the portal, even now, over two years since it was installed. That children like it, especially, but today, there was nobody there.
Not only was the space before the portal totally barren, but the portal itself showed the almost haunting vista of another empty rain-soaked city. Had I not been absent from the scene on the screen, I would have thought I was staring at a mirror image. Of the five cities twinned with the North Earl Street installation, I decided that this must be Lublin — a city that I can only imagine is exactly like Dublin except for they have a big stupid L on their equivalent of Grafton St.
The Dublin D is a monument to our desperate desire to build monuments to things
THE TOP OF Graton St has no shortage of photo opportunities.
There are the hanging gardens of St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, the Roman arches of the park itself and the Gaiety Theatre.
Since the start of October, the touristic appeal of the street has been bolstered further by the addition of a big sculpture officially known as The Dublin D — standing 2.7 metres high, 2.3 metres wide,
According to the council’s press release: “The contemporary sculpture is inspired by Dublin’s distinctive brand mark and creates a new visual landmark in the heart of the capital. It celebrates the people, places and qualities that make Dublin a dynamic, creative and welcoming region in which to live, work, invest, study and visit.”
It’s a big claim. It’s a lot to ask, even of such a big D.
On Wednesday morning, I decided to visit The Dublin D and see if it was really delivering on its stated aims.
For a few minutes after I arrived, nobody approached the D. The primary disadvantage of the Dublin D, for the purposes of my specific research, is that there’s really no spot nearby where you can peep at it without looking like some kind of flasher.
As time ticked by, I considered doing what I could to artificially inflate interest, perhaps by standing beside it and loudly saying something like ‘Wow, what an effective way to celebrate the people, places and qualities that make Dublin a dynamic, creative and welcoming region in which live, work, invest, study, and of course, visit — money well spent’, but thankfully it wasn’t long before people did begin to interact with the D.
Eventually, two young female students passed by the sculpture and I saw one of them pointing at it and saying “€83,000″, referring to the reported cost of the sculpture. These two students were absolutely not happy to be stopped by me in the middle of their day (I wouldn’t really want to be), but they were kind enough to give me a quote each. One said “I think it’s stupid” and the other said “I think the money could have been better spent on something else”.
I arrived at 11.27am and decided to stay for half an hour. Over that time I collected the following data. Two couples stopped by the D to take photos of each other and together. One family of four stopped to take a photo of one of their children with the sculpture. Four more families of different sizes took photos either of each other with the D, or simply of the D without any human presence. One woman took photos of the park, the shopping centre, and Grafton Street, but did not take a photo of the D. Almost pointedly.
I won the trust of the first couple by offering to take a photo of them with the D, after which I sprung on them my selfish, ulterior, quasi-mainstream-media motive. I asked them if they were impressed by the D and to be fair to the woman, she said yes. In fact, she told me that when she made a little photo booklet of her trip that the photo of them in front of the D would be ‘on the cover’. This was a very nice sentiment, but the couple was Canadian, and I did wonder if they were being so nice because they thought I had some kind of personal investment in the D and that my feelings would be hurt if they disparaged it. D-sparaged it, if you will.
Of the second couple I asked whether they liked the sculpture. The man shrugged. When I asked if they thought it was worth €83,000, it became clear that he was shrugging because he didn’t speak English and didn’t understand what I was asking.
All-in-all, I saw just over 20 people interact with the D over the course of 30 minutes coming up to midday in October, just as a storm is about to fall. It’s not nothing. Tourists will take photos with it. They’ll put those photos on their Instagram pages. Other prospective tourists will see them and they’ll probably come and do the same thing.
Sure, you might argue that tourists will take pictures with anything these days, but that’s not Dublin City Council’s fault. Is it patently silly to suggest that a giant D containing all the letters of the word Dublin spelled out in squares with each square representing the six crucial components of Dublin (bronze, foliage, oak, music, water and mirror?) actually communicates some idea of the city as wonderful place to live? Yes, of course.
But does it do the job of giving tourists a landmark to meet at, stand next to and take pictures of? That it does, my friend.
Overcome with the spirit of celebrating my city’s dynamic brand activation, I decided to swing by one of the other recently-added monuments to our welcoming-creative- investment-work-innovation-utopia-where-everyone-can-afford-to-live-and nobody-ever-hates-it-here: the Dublin portal.
I’d been told by my colleagues that people still visit the portal, even now, over two years since it was installed. That children like it, especially, but today, there was nobody there.
Not only was the space before the portal totally barren, but the portal itself showed the almost haunting vista of another empty rain-soaked city. Had I not been absent from the scene on the screen, I would have thought I was staring at a mirror image. Of the five cities twinned with the North Earl Street installation, I decided that this must be Lublin — a city that I can only imagine is exactly like Dublin except for they have a big stupid L on their equivalent of Grafton St.
Doublin' Down on the Dublin D Dublin grafton st October St Stephen's Green Tourism Irish