Nauru Elegies - Int'l Biennial of Media Arts

2D barcode graphic poster

Image courtesy of the artist, Paul D. Miller

Nauru Elegies, film sketch

Image courtesy of the artist, Paul D. Miller

Hysographic Animation of Nauru

Image courtesy of the artist, Annie K. Kwon

Acrylic Sculpture of Nauru

Image Courtesy of the artist, Annie K. Kwon

flyer courtesy EXPERIMENTA UTOPIA NOW

Nauru Elegies: a portrait in sound and hypsographic architecture
by Annie K. Kwon and Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky)

History:

The Republic of Nauru is a small island in the South Pacific Ocean. It is the world's smallest independent state and represents a place at the most remote extreme of the planet. Its utopic geography and landscape stages a dystopic economy and society. It was used as a raw resource by several of the Great Power states until there was literally, nothing left. Nauru has been mined throughout the last two centuries for its phosphate deposits, which occupied 90% of the island. In the 1980s, phosphate exports briefly gave Nauruans one of the highest per capita incomes in the Third World. It is anticipated that the phosphate reserves will be completely exhausted before 2050. Despite this, the unemployment rate currently stands at 90%. As a small territory with no exploitable resources, in the 1990’s Nauru turned to off‐shore financing, and the creation of virtual banks as a way of earning sorely needed foreign currency. In turn, it mirrors the off‐shore island economies of The Cayman Islands, and continental havens like Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Artwork:

The Nauru Elegies project looks at the combination of unique qualities that make a remote place like Nauru a core member of the 21st century global economy. It explores an island in a state of environmental collapse through a variety of mediums: film, hypsographic animation, a musical score, interactive posters, and acrylic sculpture. The music component of Nauru Elegies reflects colonial and post-colonial issues facing the digital economy of the 21st century translated into a string quartet, composed by Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), while the architectural component, conceptualized by Annie K. Kwon, spatializes and formalizes an otherwise invisible economic flow and irreversible ecological devastation.

A new architecture reclaims a local hypsographic territory at a culmination of global currents. The poet Goethe once wrote: “architecture is nothing but frozen music." Nauru Elegies asks what happens if we reverse engineer that process through on‐site recordings and footage translated through the prism of music and architectural form.

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Artists' Statement:

'The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture' is a technical synthesis of a live string ensemble, projected high-definition video footage, digital animation and live internet feed. It is an orchestration of content retrieved and processed in multiple localities including research in New York City, documentation in Nauru and performed by local musicians. It is a statement of technology and media processes in the 21st century that is exponentially progressing to a more dematerialized and delocalized state.

Audio and video recordings have been taken with the most current and mobile digital technologies in addition to the exploration of medical isosurf modeling techniques appropriated in architectural form and rendering. Economic dynamics will be mapped using current open source satellite and geospatial technologies including NASA World Wind to map hypsometric and bathymetric contours. The Nauru Elegies is realized in multiple technical layers, a manifold performance that has identifiable localities held by a complex global structure.

- Annie K. Kwon and Paul D. Miller of KWON MILLER PRODUCTIONS.

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Curator's statement:

Nauru Elegies is a haunting homage to a displaced society.  From the refuse littered beaches, to an architecture constructed to mourn their loss of natural resources, this once nomadic culture now circles their island on motorcyles via a single looping road.  The native population has dwindled to 5%, and they join the Australian and American locals in singing Christian songs, eating Chinese fast food, and surviving on a stipend of $160/month AUD.  The fractured and empathetic rendering of this by Paul and Annie comes thorough in the disparate artworks that when displayed together, provide a overall picture of culture in danger of complete irradication. 

This exhibition was prototyped in Beta_space at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. As part of their sketch process, Paul and Annie visited the collection stores of both the Australian and Powerhouse Museums, where between 70 and 90 objects from Nauruan history reside.  From stamps, to shields, to clothing, tools and swords, it became clear to the artists that mapping and a sense of place were at the forefront of the Oceanic culture in which Nauru was previously so steeped.  Close neighbours from Fiji wore garments that showcased where they were from, serving as maps or location identifiers.  This practise is mirrored in Miller's graphic posters containing location identifiers in the form of 2-dimensional barcodes transferring the audience that interacts with them to virtual sites containing historical and controversial information about Nauru. An identity previously communicated with painted dots on bark has evolved. It is now mirrored in pixels and is being communicated not through the grainy photographs of brave explorers, but through the internet accessed by hand held devices and a curious general public.

Kwon utilised isosurf modelling technology to render both her animation and her acrylic sculpture.  In using a technology designed to scan the human body for illness, disease, and decay; Kwon lends a physicality to her mapping of what's left of the island.  This medium is not only recording what remains of a once rich deposit of phosphate, but takes us on a chilling virtual journey through the spaces that were created in the mining of this deposit. The definition of elegy is a poem or song to a deceased family member, and one gets the feeling here that they are walking through a loved one's tomb. This is especially true when Miller's achingly resonant score interrupts your experience, winding its way into your being as you take in the film, the animation, the sculpture, and the sites of this contemporary snapshot of Nauru.

Nauru Elegies was first shown as a prototype in Beta_space in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and was produced with the support of the Powerhouse Museum, the Creativity and Cognition Studios, Cyclic Defrost, and the Interaction Consortium.  A big thank you to the colleagues affiliated with New Media Curation, who provided myself and the artists with the tools necessary to bring this work into the public consciousness.  And of course, thank you to Experimenta for recognising it's potential and value in providing us with the follow up resources to produce the polished work you will see before you at Blindside.

- Deborah Turnbull, New Media Curation (written from an interview taken on the 30 December, 2009 with the artists)

Nauru Elegies, by Annie K. Kwon and Paul D. Miller

Image courtesy the artists, Paul D. Miller and Annie K. Kwon

A Hypsographic Analysis of Nauru

'The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture' is a technical synthesis of a live string ensemble, projected high-definition video footage, digital animation and live internet feed. It is an orchestration of content retrieved and processed in multiple localities including research in New York City, documentation in Nauru and performed in Yokohama by local musicians. It is a statement of technology and media processes in the 21st century that is exponentially progressing to a more dematerialized and delocalized state.

Audio and video recordings will be taken with the most current and mobile digital technologies in addition to the exploration of medical isosurf modeling techniques appropriated in architectural form and rendering. Economic dynamics will be mapped using current open source satellite and geospatial technologies including NASA World Wind to map hypsometric and bathymetric contours. The Nauru Elegies is realized in multiple technical layers, a manifold performance that has identifiable localities held by a complex global structure.

Text contributed by Paul Miller and Ann Kwon via KWON MILLER PRODUCTIONS.

KWON MILLER PRODUCTIONS has contracted New Media Curation to exhibit the Nauru Elegies in its final iteration across Australia.  Prototyping in Beta_space will provide Sydney venues with a sneak preview of the final iteration to be designed and coded by the Interaction Consortium.  The artists spent eight weeks  with a production crew on Nauru filming, researching, and interviewing the inhabitants to provide the global audience with a cross section of contemporary existence through the mediums of sound, music, and light, highlighting how an isolated culture struggles to survive at the cusp of financial, cultural, and social displacement.

Bienalto House Launch

image courtesy of Bienalto House

The new home of Bienalto!

Image courtesy of the artist, Ian Gwilt

Folder Culture, 2009

Image courtesy of the artist, Chris Bowman

Wave, 2009

image courtesy of the artist, Steph Rajalingham

Magic Wallpaper, 2009

Image courtesy of the artists, SoapBox Project

SoapBox Project, 2009

Hurol Inan, Bienalto's founder, is hosting a lavish launch for the new home of his experience design firm, Bienalto House.  It is a VIP event spanning clients in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.  NMC is lucky enough to have been invited to curate a series of interactive works to show off the new space, marrying experience architecture and interactive artwork in a uniform space.

Artists Ian Gwilt, Chris Bowman, Steph Rajalingham, and the SoapBox Project will adorn both internal and external areas of the new house, creating an immersive and absorbing experience for the top clientele of this outstanding firm.

Watch this space for Hurol's video on the history and inspiration behind Bienalto House!

Memory Flows

Image courtesy of the artist, Jacqueline Gothe

Memory Flows is an ongoing and distributed media art project of the CMAI, funded by the Inter-Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Starting in June, it will flow into and be distrubuted through exhibitions, groups shows, events, spaces – building its own full flow along the way, for a full exhibition in 2010. The first distribution of Memory Flows works and works in progress will be with Image Ecologies at UTS and with Liquid Architecture (Australia's foremost Sound Art Festival).

Several Memory Flows sound works will be part of the Liquid Architecture exhibition at Carriage Works (24.06.2009 - 27.06.2009 )and there will be a performance in the Bon Marche Studio on June 25, as a Liquid Architecture event.  The performance will be a distributed event – both in terms of the way the performers improvise with visual and sound material and in the way that it will stream live to the Internet and onto screens in Building 1 during the event, and following the event (for the duration of Image Ecologies) with an edited loop of the event and sound.  The distributed nature and liveness of this performance and its musicality will speak to the space at the back of level 4 in the Tower,  which is itself live, active, and energized by the students who move through it. The distributed nature of the event also speaks directly to the Memory Flows project itself and the way CMAI works through process oriented collaboration, project based and distributed works, and creative practice as research.

Beta_space

image courtesy of Julien Phalip

From January 2007 – January 2009, Deborah acted as curator and administrator for this prototype interactive exhibition space in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.  She inherited this practise from CCS PhD student Lizzie Muller, who conceived of the idea with CCS Director Ernest Edmonds and PHM Head Curator, Matthew Connell.  Managing this space provided Deborah with her first consistent curatorial practice in Sydney since researching and writing her Master’s on how technology can augment traditional art practice through the University of Sydney.

She is regularly invited back to guest curate shows of special interest to the research, the museum, or to NMC.

Spring and Asura.02 - Disturbance

Image courtesy of the artist, Chris Bowman

Spring and Asura, 2008. As exhibited in Beta_space, PHM, Sydney 2008.

Spring and Asura is the result of creative work developed from an inquiry into process and prototyping, and supported by a longstanding collaboration between Chris Bowman and Dr. Alastair Weakley.  

Spring and Asura.02 - Disturbance is an interactive artwork that explores the interconnectivity of the animate and the inanimate. The centerpiece to the exhibition is an interactive artwork that explores the relationship between video images of the natural world and the poem "Spring and Asura" written by Kenji Miyazawa (translated into English by Hiroaki Sato).  

The work is further explored through the movement of visitors within the space and the recitation of one of the most important of Buddhist sutras: the Heart Sutra.  The video sequences represent the artist’s personal explorations of and reflections on the poem and have influenced the development of the software system.  

Using a combination of image and motion capture technology the artwork explores the movement of light and shade within the video recordings, taking into account the disturbance of the visitor in the space. This self-generating interconnected system creates an ordering and re-ordering of the poetry text resulting in shifts in time, movement and abstraction through the viewing of the work.    

Spring and Asura .01 (a prototype in development) was exhibited at the Powerhouse Museum (Beta_Space Gallery in 2008). At ATVP we see a more fully developed work that extends the form's interaction, enhances the work’s responsiveness to the movement of visitors around it and in turn creates a greater sense of engagement between the visitor and the artwork.  Importantly, Spring and Asura now exists as pool of images - a metaphor of a chozubachi or tsukubai (a water basin found at Zen Buddhist temples used for ritual purification) on which visitors are encouraged to contemplate the poem and the images. Such “interconnectivity” is an important metaphor for both the artist and Kenji and it informs every aspect of their artwork.  

Also on display at ATVP are support materials created by the artist during the making of Spring and Asura .01 and .02 , along with other relational works that serve as experiments with both the concepts and the tools surrounding and supporting Spring and Asura. These images consist of schematics and sketches, and manipulation of the artist’s key medium, film, to demonstrate early prototype development by the artist and the technologist from 2005 – 2007. Collectively these images give the viewer an insight into the graphic representations of space and time (schematic drawings) and the prototype system development for the image capture technology that operates in Spring and Asura.  

Fashioning Now...

Image courtesy of Romance Was Born

Romance Was Born, 2009 Collection

Fashion is often perceived negatively in terms of sustainability and yet one of its inherent qualities is innovation, the search for new solutions. This exhibition explores various ways in which fashion designers, artists and companies are refashioning the act of making clothes for a sustainable future where ‘fashion’ is an inherently positive facet of culture.

The scope of the exhibition extends from high fashion to mass manufacturing, and from products to systems. It attempts to highlight alternate modes of sustainable fashion in addition to the popular options of fashion produced with organic materials or recycled vintage fabrics. Some pieces are not wearable in the traditional sense, but make strong cases for new, improved practices.

Fashioning Now draws on research projects from international creators who are investigating solutions in various areas of the ‘closed loop’ system of production.  This exhibition objects are divided into four main categories: source, make, use and last.

Amongst the exhibition objects will be fashion garments and textile objects, digital print photographs / illustrations / drawings and time-based media.

Image Ecologies

Image courtesy of the artist, Ernest Edmonds

Shaping Form, 2007. As exhibited in Gallery 1 of the CDG, 2007.

Image courtesy of the artists, Maria Miranda & Norie Neumark

The 4th Floor, 2004-5. Online interface of Rue de Chazelles, Paris.

Image courtesy of the artist, Ian Gwilt

save_as, 2007. As exhibited in Beta_space, PHM, Sydney, 2007

Invited Artists: Ernest Edmonds, Brigid Costello, Maria Miranda & Norie Neumark, Sarah Gibson, Ian Gwilt, Eamon Davern

Curatorial Rationale: New Media artwork has moved beyond the recorded mediums of photography and film to encompass interactive, augmented, and generative works due to the appropriation of and reliance on digitization by its practitioners. 

These emergent and evolving art forms exist, in the words of Ron Burnett, as image ecologies. This terminology references the exploratory way in which the average person navigates digital imagery in contemporary society.  This exhibition will explore the collaborative way New Media Research initiatives within UTS are themselves example of creative ecologies.

By providing environments, tools, and instruction, these environments are instilling in their inhabitants (both students and collaborators) the ability to evolve alongside current technology in regard to new media art creation. This exhibition will showcase the production outputs of three leading UTS laboratories and studios: 1) the Creativity and Cognition Studios (FEIT); 2) the Centre for Media Arts Innovation (HSS); and 3) the Visual Communication course for School of Design (DAB).

Mundane Traces

Image courtesy of the artist, Ian Gwilt

Folderwall, 2007. As exhibited in Beta_space, PHM, Sydney, 2007.

The mundane-traces show is a collection of New Media artworks created by Ian Gwilt. Using innovative technologies to re-imagine the graphical user interface as a creative artefact the six individual works explore the graphic user interface in a creative context using augmented reality, rapid protoyping and laser cutting technologies. The result is an intriguing mix of physical and virtual interpretations of the folders, files and scrollbars from the everyday computer desktop.
 
These creative repositionings play with our understanding and expectations of the conventional computer orientated interface through variations in context, scale and media. The folders and files that occur in the exhibition space create complex layered readings that allude to both the original physical metaphor of the office desktop and the Graphical User Interface interpretation. Comments to a larger, cultural image ecology of these everyday symbols are facilitated through the digital, material constructs of a new, augmented reality artwork that uses mobile phone video facilities to place digital content in direct relation to material artefacts.

The Olympic Tally Room on Level 7 of UTS’s new Building 10 is a transient site. Due to be demolished at the close of 2008, it encompasses a planned obsolescence not dissimilar to the objects on display.  The stripping of the site has already begun, leaving a starkness and absence that cradles these esoteric symbols of progress removed from their natural and virtual habitat for artistic contemplation and consumption.

CALLING ALL VOLUNTEERS!

The Mundane Traces Exhibition requires dedicated and experienced volunteers to mind this interactive arts exhibition between 25 November - 6 December 2008.  There are two types of shifts available:

1) Opening Night - Tuesday 25 November, from 5-9pm.  This shift will focus on support tasks such as assisting with hosting duties (greetings, directions, refreshments), gallery minding, and artwork and publication sales. Previous experience in these areas are appreciated.

2) Gallery Minding - Wednesday 26 November - Friday 5 December, from 12-2:30pm and 2:30-5pm.  These shifts will require some technical expertise (turning a mobile phone on/off linking through to a portable video camera).  You will be required to ensure that all technical equipment remain safe and secure, including the collection and deposit of handheld devices at the open and close of each day.  You must also be prepared to liaise with security and building management should something be stolen.  When people are in the gallery space, you will be expected to be alert, professional and informed about the exhibition.  When there are not people in the space, you are welcome to read, surf the internet (laptop provided), or even STUDY.

Please email Deborah Turnbull or ring 0400 920 761  to register as a volunteer.  Spots are limited, so don't miss out on this great opportunity to further your experience in art/technology/design!

UTS: Animation Festival

In celebration of the newly formalized Masters of Animation, the School of Design will do a limited screening of the Australian International Animation Festival (AIAF). Known for her administrative skills, Deborah was recruited by the acting course director, Chris Bowman, to oversee the tasks of liaising with AIAF staff, the OLFC exemption application process, the procurement of the film streams, venue hire, the organisation of staff and volunteers, and all web and print advertising.

A special thank you to the below media sources for supporting our festival:

Sydney Morning Herald, Encore Magazine, dhub.org, What's On Sydney, and U:mag.

ENGAGE: Interaction, Art and Audience Experience

As manager of this conference and co-editor of the proceedings, Deborah co-ordinated 70 international academics to speak and network in support of the research and evaluation performed in Beta_space from its inception in November 2004, to its current state in November 2006.

Copies of the ENGAGE proceedings are available from CCS Administration.

AMP Thought and Innovation Festival

Charged with programming the CCS stall at the AMP Thought and Innovation Festival for 2007, Deborah selected the highest quality projects available through CCS and its partners to showcase what R & D had the most commercial potential to a large external corporation.  The works of Andrew Johnston, Andrew Brown & Steve Dillon, Ian Gwilt, Roman Danylak, and Shigeki Amitani kept corporate visitors busy over the course of the day.

Correspondences in Sound and Vision

Image courtesy of the artist, Ernest Edmonds

DC_Release, 2007. As performed by Ernest Edmonds and Mark Fell at the Carriageworks, Sydney, 2007.

Deborah co-ordinated and curated this audio/visual performance utlizing musicians, composers, artists and computer scientists.  An invitation only crowd viewed 3 performances:

Opening Performances:

aacell, by Andrew Brown and Andrew Sorensen (Brisbane)

Partial Reflections, by Andrew Johnston and Ben Marks (Sydney/Brisbane)

Feature Presentations:

Port Hacking & DC_Release, by Ernest Edmonds and Mark Fell (Sydney/UK)

Conny Dietzschold Gallery

Image courtesy of the artist, Milen Miltchev and the CDG

O.T., 2007, by Milen Miltchev. As exhibited at the CDG.

Deborah performed curatorial, managerial, and commercial duties on a case-by-case basis for international gallerist Conny Dietzschold.  Our collaboration comprised 5 separate exhibitions in both the CDG and Multiple Box Sydney:

Shaping Form 2007, by Ernest Edmonds (Australia/UK) – solo exhibition, both galleries

Sculpture, Painting, Photography, by Milen Miltchev (Bulgaria/Germany)
Sculpture and Photography, by Mary Lou Pavlovic (Australia)

Sculpture and Wall Objects, by Christofer Kochs and Willi Siber (Germany)
Print Drawing on Photography, by Damian Dillon (Australia)

Wall Objects, by Daniel Goettin & Rosa M Hessling (Germany)
Beasts of Faith, photographic series by Suzanne Buljan (Australia)

To Black and Death…, by Pollyxenia Joannou (Australia)
Subvert I Sing, by Richard Tipping (Australia)

Deborah also co-ordinated the first of the 2008 Danks Street Conversations where panellists Rachel Kent (MCA), Lawrence Nield (Bligh Voller Nield Architecture), Nell Schofield (TV Presenter and Arts Writer) and sculptor Richard Goodwin were introduced by the Lord Mayor Clover Moore.  Hosted by the Brenda May Gallery in the Danks Street Complex, it was a lively evening of debate and discussion surrounding the absence/presence of public sculpture in Sydney.

Deborah and Conny expect to collaborate with CDG artist Lisa Andrews on her upcoming prototype for Andrew’s next compilation of interactive video art. It is set to exhibit in Beta_Space in April 2009.

UTS Gallery

image courtesy of UTS Gallery and Art Collection

In an early collaboration, Deborah acted as installation assistant for Ernest Edmonds’ work White Noise in the 2006 exhibition Artificial Nature 1: Transcapes – Digitally Mediated Environments.  In her more recent events administration role within the School of Design, she assisted curators Tania Creighton and Holly Williams with the public programmes for Roma Publications 1998-2008.  She assisted with planning and executing the panel discussion Books Make Friends: Autonomous publishing in art & print and oversaw the screening of the cult film Helvetica.