Rocío Grau is well-known as a busker in Galway, regularly playing classical music on her keyboard on the city’s streets.
But the Galway city-based concert pianist is also a top tier, multi-disciplinary theorist, interested in the convergence of music, technology and human experience, especially focused on how studying the brain during artistic performances can shed light on connections between empathy and attention.
The Atlantic Technological University graduate, and current University of Galway PhD student, recently won a prestigious residency to exhibit her latest project, Unconscious Brain, Elusive Perception at the Tabakalera in San Sebastián. This enormous former tobacco factory near the Franco-Spanish border houses several Basque cultural archives and institutes, and a four star hotel.
Her residency explores the latent interdependence between our biological nature and the social environment, doing so from a philosophical perspective aware of the ethical dimension of attention and imagination in perceiving and interpreting reality.
Grau had previously been awarded the Studio Quantum artist residency by the Goethe Institue in Germany, where she researched new connections between human perception and quantum theories.
The Woodquay resident, who hails from Catalonia, has had her work exhibited across Ireland and Europe.
