Omagh Bomb Memorial garden Traditional Cache

These are directed to send the light down the street where another array of mirrors bends it around the corner, and via one small mirror mounted on the nearby gable into the heart inside the obelisk. The granite bench in the garden, which covers almost its full width, has the names engraved into it, of all who died as a result of the bomb.

The site of the explosion of the Omagh bomb in Market Street (near cache GC20GE2) is marked by a pillar, made of 6 tonnes of ultra-clear 'laboratory' glass, 4.5m high.
Near the top, inside appears a 3-dimensional 'heart' in a faceted cut-glass style.
The suggested image is that of the heart suspended high in a frozen beam of light, representing love.

The approach to the artwork was that it could remember and honour the the victims and offer something to the wider community by attempting to simply, uninhibitedly and vividly express the enormity of the loss and the natural feeling, and the outpouring of compassion for them.

The idea is a gesture towards redeeming human values in the face of the atrocity.

There is an 'ideal' viewing point on the opposite pavement, where the viewer can look through the pillar and back up the beam of sunlight.

The 'pillar', the final form of which was designed, as well as other elements, by landscape architect Desmond Fitzgerald who is also responsible for the Memorial Garden, is influenced both by obelisks and cenotaphs.

On the larger scale, the work also draws attention to our place in and under the cycles of the cosmos and also to the optimistic-but-true reminder that even in the dark we know that the Sun will rise again.

It has been constructed by a complex process including laminating, i.e. attaching consecutive slabs of glass together under extreme pressure and heat.
New techniques were devised by Carey Glass Ltd. to laminate the huge pieces of glass.

This 'stack' of glass was assembled on site and wrapped, on its sides and top with a thick layer of toughened glass to form a protective outer shell to the obelisk.

In some of the inner layers are cut holes with polished edges, designed so they build in layers to form an oval cavity. In the middle three of them the heart shape is mounted, in a complex framework made of a number of different glasses, some of which Tyrone Crystal have hand-cut with a complex pattern. (see illustration) It is incorporated into the pillar using modern technology.
The whole structure is completely transparent and is an unprecedented application of glass technology.

The 'heart' is the ancient and universal verbal and visual symbol of the 'core' or essential element of things, including the Human Being, of compassion, and of fidelity.

In between the halves of of the faceted heart, (which is based on the cutting of diamonds), is a layer cut with a pattern based on the fibbonaci spiral, as seen in the centre of sunflowers, for instance, in spiral galaxies and elsewhere in nature.

This pattern has an ancient history of being used to represent the descent of the Divine to the World, and the reverse journey.

Though apparently complex, the moving-mirror technology is already existing. Sun-tracking mirrors are known as known as 'heliostats', and for this applicartion a new extremely accurate system was developed by German experts, Egis GmbH.

Developed from high-end positioners for satellite dishes, they are driven by a small box of electronics programmed to track the sun daily for the next forty years. They operate very quietly for a fraction of a second every 20 seconds to keep in position.
They are very sturdy and reliable and have been in use for years already at many sites.

Since the sunlight is merely reflected by flat mirrors rather than concentrated, there is no risk or health and safety issue.

The cache is a magnetic nano and should be easy enough to locate. Please make sure it cannot be easily seen when replacing it.

For more information about the bomb in Omagh, visit this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omagh_bomb