Points of Entry

POINTS OF ENTRY is an international touring exhibition project of installations and embodied electronic sculptural works using technology, by Australian, Canadian and New Zealand artists.

The works address con­tra­dic­tions and diverse pos­si­bil­i­ties of work­ing with inter­ac­tive tech­nolo­gies. The instal­la­tions range from self-stand­ing kinet­ic sculp­tures, to what appears at first to be high speed mod­el cars, but on clos­er exam­i­na­tion are machines that move so slow­ly they take will decades to move a small dis­tance. A char­ac­ter­is­tic of all of the works is their phys­i­cal nature; some are sculp­tur­al, while oth­ers focus on phys­i­cal and spa­tial interaction.

POINTS OF ENTRY, the title of the show, implies options and pos­si­bil­i­ties for audi­ence engage­ment with the works. While the con­cept of inter­ac­tive art is sug­ges­tive of choice and free­dom, it is use­ful to con­sid­er the extent of these choic­es. The ques­tions remains: with­in the dig­i­tal domain of pre­con­ceived com­put­er works, pro­grammed vir­tu­al art and inter­ac­tive sculp­tures, how much actu­al free­dom, how much con­trol over our choice remains? Each work in the show takes a dif­fer­ent approach to these prob­lems, some use sim­ple inter­ac­tions, or have pre-pro­grammed behav­iours, oth­ers sub­vert the con­ven­tions of what we term “inter­ac­tiv­i­ty”. Cura­tors: Nina Czegledy, Robin Pet­terd, and Deb­o­rah Lawler-Dormer­Artists involved: Aus­tralia — Sophea Lern­er, Greg Bourke Leigh Hob­ba, Andrew Bur­rell Cana­da — Joce­lyn Robert and Daniel Jol­liffe, Jon Baturin, Simone Jones and Hope Thomp­son New Zealand — Sean Kerr and Kim Fogel­berg, Vir­gina King, Yuk King Tan, Alex Monteith

The artists/the select­ed works follows:

Cana­da

Ground Station

a col­lab­o­ra­tive instal­la­tion by Joce­lyn Robert and Daniel Jolliffe

Ground Sta­tion pro­duces music in real time by fol­low­ing the cur­rent azimuth, ele­va­tion and sig­nal strength of thir­ty-two Glob­al Posi­tion­ing Sys­tem (GPS) satel­lites. GS is in a sense an audi­ble reflec­tion of the activ­i­ties of the GPS net­work it watch­es. Where­as GPS was devel­oped as a posi­tion­ing tech­nol­o­gy to aid in war­fare, Ground Sta­tion (GS) inverts the tra­di­tion­al use of this data by watch­ing the posi­tions and move­ment of the satel­lites them­selves. As satel­lite posi­tion data is fed into GS, it is processed by an algo­rithm designed by the artists that fil­ters and transcodes this into musi­cal nota­tion. This unique, con­tin­u­ous musi­cal score is then played live through speak­ers, or in cer­tain ver­sions of the work on a Dysklavier piano.

In effect, Ground Sta­tion works by bor­row­ing data from the US mil­i­tary’s Glob­al posi­tion­ing satel­lite net­work. There are thus two sets of authors for the music GS pro­duces: the artist-pro­gram­mers who cre­ate and con­tex­tu­al­ize the work, and the mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture that main­tains and over­sees the GPS net­work. The con­nec­tion between these authors is a def­i­nite one: GS is com­po­si­tion­al­ly depen­dent on the data it receives from the GPS net­work, and in turn on the mil­i­tary’s own uplink sta­tions that con­trols the satel­lites. The cen­tral role of Schriev­er Air Force Base in the music pro­duced by GS is indi­rect yet sig­nif­i­cant, as this music depends on satel­lite tra­jec­to­ry, which is under direct mil­i­tary con­trol. With­out this ground con­trol, the music pro­duced by GS would even­tu­al­ly fade and cease, in par­al­lel with the decay of the satel­lites themselves.

Sys­tems aside, Ground Sta­tion was not con­ceived to cham­pi­on tech­nol­o­gy or the pos­si­bil­i­ties of com­put­er-based musi­cal com­po­si­tion. As col­lab­o­ra­tors we have lit­tle inter­est in the aes­thet­ics of the ‘music’ pro­duced by the piano. Rather, its goal is to pro­duce music as a kind of cul­tur­al arti­fact of the time and place we live in. Musi­cal­ly, GS relies on the sup­po­si­tion that musi­cal com­po­si­tion is a prod­uct of the time and place in which it is pro­duced, rather than its for­mal or syn­tac­ti­cal qual­i­ties. A piano played under the rock­et fire of wartime Beirut, for exam­ple, and Ground Sta­tionís piano-man­i­fest­ed satel­lite data are both musi­cal com­po­si­tions that reflect specif­i­cal­ly upon the social state of the cul­tures they are cre­at­ed within.

Ground Sta­tion sets out to make vis­i­ble dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al approach­es to tech­nol­o­gy, and to make audi­ble the invis­i­ble data that con­nects these approach­es. In this sense Ground Sta­tionís per­for­mance is not one of music but an aur­al trans­la­tion of the cur­rent tech­nol­o­gized soci­ety that we inhabit.

Joce­lyn Robert is inter­est­ed by the instant, the space between noth­ings, the ban­a­lyt­ic arche­ol­o­gy. Audio artist, video artist, instal­la­tion artist, etc artist, he first stud­ied as a phar­ma­cist, then as an archi­tect. He worked in archi­tec­ture until 1989, then he switched to full time art. He col­lab­o­rat­ed with Diane Landry, Bruit TTV, Arbo Cyber, and oth­ers on dif­fer­ent per­for­mances and instal­la­tions, and pro­duced sev­er­al solo works as well. He showed his work here and there while you were look­ing else­where. He pub­lished sev­er­al cds of his own audio work, on ReR records, Obz and Ohm Edi­tions, par­tic­i­pat­ed to anoth­er 20 with dif­fer­ent artists, showed inter­ac­tive instal­la­tions in gal­leries, pub­lished texts in books, inter­views in mag­a­zines, etc etc etc. Last Feb­ru­ary, he won the first prize in the New Image cat­e­go­ry of the Trans­me­di­ale Awards, in Berlin, with his com­put­er-video instal­la­tion L Inven­tion des Ani­maux. In 1993, with Pierre-André Arcand, Christof Migone and a few oth­ers, he found­ed Avatar, an audio artists-run cen­tre in Que­bec City and act­ed as pres­i­dent and artis­tic direc­tor of the cen­tre until 2001. These days he can be found in Cal­i­for­nia, study­ing in a lit­tle stu­dio between trees. He can be reached at jrontheroad@hotmail.com, and more infor­ma­tion on him and his work can be found at www.stanford.edu/~jrobert

Daniel Jol­liffe (Ontario, 1964). A media and visu­al artist since 1989, Daniel’s work is a syn­the­sis of sculp­tur­al prac­tice and elec­tron­ic tech­nolo­gies. His works take an orig­i­nal approach to the inter­ac­tion of the body and tech­nol­o­gy, cre­at­ing phys­i­cal­ly inten­sive expe­ri­ences which chal­lenge con­ven­tion­al notions of point and click inter­ac­tiv­i­ty. His inter­ac­tive works and tech­nol­o­gy based art projects have been shown across Cana­da and the Unit­ed States. He was until recent­ly co-direc­tor of the Dig­i­tal Earth in Van­cou­ver, B.C. which in 2000 pre­sent­ed ZDM: A Theme Park of Elec­tron­ic Cul­ture. He has taught work­shops intro­duc­ing artists to elec­tron­ic prac­tices both over­seas and across Cana­da. He is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a degree in Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vic­to­ria, British Columbia.

“Doukhoubor communal bath age 5”

a pho­to based instal­la­tion by Jon Baturin

“Doukhou­bor com­mu­nal bath age 5” is a mod­u­lar envi­ron­ment using sen­so­ry trig­gers, sound, heat and pho­to-based imagery. We see — sense — almost feel — warm bod­ies, thighs, bel­lies, flesh. Inner and out­er. Young and old. Ecsta­t­ic and mortified.

“Com­mu­nal bath” occu­pies a phys­i­cal space (small) and psy­cho­log­i­cal space (large). It is tac­tile. Inti­mate. Com­fort­able, snug. A place for under­stand­ing — for belong­ing. Not a place to fear or a place to be feared.

“I was 5. My moth­er was dying — had died of can­cer. We trav­eled to Grand Forks B.C. to spend heal­ing — and griev­ing — time with our Doukhobour fam­i­ly. There was rit­u­al song and rit­u­al prayer. Hugs and whis­pers. (Russ­ian & Eng­lish) Endear­ments and tears. warm laps.

The com­mu­nal bath-house. A place of tra­di­tion and lore; of fam­i­ly and of pre­cious bonds. A place for renew­al; for hope and for res­o­lu­tion for my father. A place to share me. A place for spir­it, for worth, for mean­ing. A place to embrace when god deserts. A place — when sense of place has gone. I was five. I knew none of this.

My Father shared steam, sweat, talk, grief. He cried copi­ous­ly. Our tears were deep water. Clean water. They fit this place. I learned that well. Sat qui­et. Sat low. Uncles and aunts, cousins. fam­i­ly friends. boy flesh. girl flesh. Man flesh. Innies and out­ies. Bel­lies and thighs. Met them all. (Met them often). Gen­tle hugs. Whis­per­ings. Qui­et pleas. “health/ dis­ease.…” “life / death.…” “…death…” “…death…” “…death…” lots and lots and lots of death.… too much for one aged 5.

So much old­er now. Yet I reside there still. see it again. See it often. The dead. Uncles and aunts, cousins. friends. boy flesh and girl flesh. Innies and out­ies. Bel­lies and thighs. Dan­g­ly bits. Death. Mor­ti­fi­ca­tion. Ever-present tragedy. Unre­quit­ed sor­row and — on occa­sion — unan­tic­i­pat­ed joy.”

Jon Baturin is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor and Pro­gram Direc­tor (Pho­tog­ra­phy and Explo­rations) York Uni­ver­si­ty, Toron­to Cana­da . He has in his recent pho­to-based and dig­i­tal work col­lab­o­rat­ed with visu­al artists, social activists, poets, nov­el­ists, actors, musi­cians from North Amer­i­ca, Eng­land, Chi­na, Aus­tralia, Brazil and the Caribbean.

His pho­to­graph­ic and dig­i­tal works have been shown exten­sive­ly including:

• Lim­i­nal Body: Aus­tralian Cen­tre for Pho­tog­ra­phy (2000 Syd­ney Olympics)
• Dig­i­tized Bod­ies: Vir­tu­al Spec­ta­cles: Lud­wig Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art (Octo­ber 2000 Budapest, Hun­gary) Mest­na Muse­um Galer­jia (Feb­ru­ary 2001, Lub­jiana Slovenia)
• …About ENDS (the hope project): Gallery 44, June 2002, Toron­to Canada)

Studies in Compulsive Movement: Anxiety Box No.1

by Simone Jones and Hope Thomp­son, 2002

Stud­ies in Com­pul­sive Move­ment: Anx­i­ety Box No.1 is an inter­ac­tive audio sculp­ture with two ani­ma­tion flip­books. Each flip­book trig­gers a sep­a­rate audio sound­track when picked up and acti­vat­ed by the view­er. The flip­books con­tain ani­mat­ed draw­ings of a repeat­ed body movement.

Through the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the audio sound­tracks and the ani­mat­ed images, the work exam­ines the rela­tion­ship between psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal com­pul­sion. Last­ly, both the flip­books and the audio tracks have the poten­tial to loop end­less­ly (com­pul­sive­ly!) the work is com­plet­ed by the inter­ac­tion of the view­er’s the action of acti­vat­ing the flip­book mim­ics the repeat­ed nature of the mov­ing images and loop­ing audio soundtracks.

Simone Jones makes elec­tron­ic sculp­ture and video. Hope Thomp­son is a writer and film­mak­er. Stud­ies in Com­pul­sive Move­ment: Anx­i­ety Box No.1 is their first offi­cial collaboration.

 

New Zealand

Dot_IV.

instal­la­tion, 2001, by Sean Kerr (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kim Fogelberg)

The instal­la­tion plays upon the beau­ty of sim­plic­i­ty. The work shares Lye “direct phi­los­o­phy” being cre­at­ed entire­ly with­in a com­put­er with no exter­nal sampling.

“Dot_IV. reflects my fas­ci­na­tion with musi­cal struc­ture and the asso­ci­a­tion of sound, images and repeat­ing loops,” says Kerr.

Sean Kerr is a Lec­tur­er in Inter­me­dia, Elam Fine Arts School, Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land, Auck­land and prac­tices as a Pro­fes­sion­al Visu­al Artists and Free­lance Curator.

Antarctic Heart

instal­la­tion, 2001, by Vir­gina King

King draws an anal­o­gy between the human pres­ence in Antarc­ti­ca and the way she works, the anom­aly of her del­i­cate works cre­at­ed by using noisy, aggres­sive machin­ery. Sus­pend­ed macro­carpa sculp­tures are massed togeth­er, evok­ing the com­plex­i­ty and diver­si­ty of their forms in real life as revealed by the elec­tron micro­scope. The works move, turn­ing slow­ly, their move­ment induc­ing a hyp­not­ic effect on the view­er. The sur­vival of life forms is the fun­da­men­tal theme of the work, described by Gilbert Wong as a pos­i­tive state­ment about the tenac­i­ty of life in the extremes. By exag­ger­at­ing the scale King allows us to make oth­er con­nec­tions, to allude to her pre­vi­ous works, some of which also make ref­er­ence to microorganisms.

Sound and light con­tribute to a sense of the sub­ter­ranean and the mys­ti­cal a leap from sci­en­tif­ic data to the inde­fin­able world of the spir­it. The flu­o­res­cent sur­faces of the works are bathed in eerie ultra vio­let light and the dark­ness of the space hints at the jour­ney to Antarc­ti­ca. Ultra vio­let light makes ref­er­ence to research that has been con­duct­ed on its effect on diatoms.

In the video, King has lay­ered and dis­solved elec­tron micro­scope images that are com­put­er coloured and ani­mat­ed with footage she filmed on loca­tion in the extra­or­di­nary Antarc­tic land­scape. These are inter­spersed with images of the sculp­tures and the pres­ence of life forms, their real­i­ty and their new rep­re­sen­ta­tion, is in stark con­trast with the dra­mat­ic vistas.

Vir­ginia King has been exhibit­ing in solo and group exhi­bi­tions since 1978. In 1999 she par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Pacif­ic Rim exhi­bi­tion Vol­ume and Form Sin­ga­pore í99. Her sur­vey exhi­bi­tion Tide­line-Sculp­ture: a ten year sur­vey was pre­sent­ed at Whangarei Art Muse­um. She has made two pre­vi­ous art videos: Pas­sage, 1995 and Styx (Sticks), 1997. Both videos have been includ­ed in the Video pro­gramme orga­nized by the Mov­ing Image Cen­tre as part of the Asia Pacif­ic Tri­en­nale, Bris­bane Art Gallery, Queens­land, Aus­tralia. In 2000 Styx/Sticks was pur­chased by Bris­bane Art Gallery for pub­lic view­ing. Vir­ginia lives in Auck­land and works full time as a sculptor.

The new Siteseer

instal­la­tion, 2002, by Yuk King Tan

Using rock­ets whose bod­ies con­tain small cam­eras Yuk King Tan has devel­oped a series of “land­scape” images tak­en from the mis­siles down­ward tra­jec­to­ry. The pho­tographs and the art­work dis­cuss the issue of bor­der, ter­ri­to­ry and the divi­sion of land.

The loca­tion of the “take-off” and most of the pho­tographs were sit­u­at­ed at the edge of the Tama­ki Dri­ve between Mis­sion Bay res­i­den­tial and the sea. The under­ly­ing inter­est of the project is the inter­sec­tion between land and har­bour, his­to­ry and devel­op­ment, home and habi­tat. An activ­i­ty like launch­ing a small rock­et breaks the usu­al flow of the dai­ly traf­fic sug­gest­ing a slight shift in con­ven­tion and norm. Evok­ing the sub­tle men­ace of mil­i­tary sur­veil­lance and a humor­ous retake on tourist pho­tog­ra­phy the work sub­tly ques­tions how we may per­ceive land and home.

Yuk King Tan was born in Aus­tralia and is a grad­u­ate with a BFA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land. She has had solo exhi­bi­tions across Aus­tralia and New Zealand and par­tic­i­pat­ed in group shows world­wide. Her work has received media reviews in Aus­tralia, New Zealand and Europe.

24 frames reframed

instal­la­tion, 2002, Alex Mon­tei­th in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dar­ren Glass

The instal­la­tion of this work (which is still in progress and will lat­er become part of a body of works) present­ly involves a sin­gle video pro­jec­tion. The pro­jec­tor is fed its image from a video switch­er (the kind they use in video sur­veil­lance for secu­ri­ty) which reads sig­nals from 4 videos run­ning simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. This switch­er enables the view­ers to select and sequence one after the oth­er any or all of the sig­nals being sent from 1–4 of the video decks. The speed it switch­es between views of the dan­de­lion is variable.

Alex Mon­tei­th is cur­rent­ly study­ing for Doc­tor­ate in Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land, New Zealand. She has worked and shown her films and videos exten­sive­ly and received pres­ti­gious awards worldwide.

 

Aus­tralia

The Glass Bell

instal­la­tion, 2002, Sophea Lerner

A house haunt­ed by a ghost, a lake haunt­ed by a for­got­ten bell, dreams haunt­ed by a lan­guage you have nev­er learnt to speak… Based on some of the sto­ries the artist’s grand­moth­er took with her when she left the vil­lage in Fin­land where she grew up. A poet­ic rever­ie on lan­guage, mem­o­ry and sep­a­ra­tion The Glass Bell explores the role of sto­ries as place­hold­ers for the unut­ter­able, for what falls between lan­guages and places when we leave.

“Here you are on the sur­face of lan­guage, skat­ing on thin ice, what you are say­ing, the words, are not your moth­er tongue. You have nev­er learned to speak her language…”

The Glass Bell has been exhib­it­ed in three forms: As a radio­phon­ic broad­cast for The Lis­ten­ing Room, Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (ABC), devel­oped dur­ing a Aus­tralia Council/ABC Audio Arts fel­low­ship in 1998 then first shown as an inter­ac­tive audio­graph­ic water instal­la­tion devel­oped col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly for Nextwave Fes­ti­val 2002. This cur­rent ver­sion does not include the col­lab­o­ra­tive inter­ac­tive elements.

Cred­its:

• Text, Images, Sounds Sophea Lerner
• Trans­la­tion Kaa­ri­na Rauramo
• Cel­lo & impro­vi­sa­tion: Ion Pearce
• Vio­la & vio­lin: Natasha Rumiz
• Per­cus­sion & impro­vi­sa­tion: Tony Lewis
• Voic­es: Annik­ki Har­ris, Vir­ginia Bax­ter, Eila Him­mel­re­ich, Sophea Lern­er, Zoe Smith
• Edit­ing and arrange­ment: Sophea Lerner
• Sound engi­neer: John Jacobs
• Prin­ci­ple sup­port­ers: The Aus­tralia Coun­cil for the Arts, Nextwave Fes­ti­val, Film Victoria
• also sup­port­ed by: Muu Media Base, Per­for­mance Space, Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Sydney.
• Whilst the inter­ac­tive water­screen is not includ­ed in this ver­sion spe­cial thanks go to code artist Ryan Sabir and design­er Kier­an Larkin for their con­tri­bu­tions to the project as a whole.

Sophea Lern­er is an Aus­tralian sound and dig­i­tal media artist spe­cial­is­ing in inter­ac­tive audio. Her work includes sound per­for­mance, instal­la­tion, film sound and exper­i­men­tal radio fea­tures. She has done lots of dif­fer­ent jobs, most of which have involved get­ting sounds and/or machines to do unex­pect­ed things. She cur­rent­ly lec­tures in media & son­ic arts at the Sibelius Acad­e­my in Helsin­ki.

Machines for Time

sculp­ture, 2001, by Greg Bourke

A series of three aero­dy­nam­ic mod­els, which are fic­tion­al pro­to­types for high-speed trans­port, with an aura of speed to them. One of the objects for instance, is a ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed machine that moves at a rate of 1 cm a year, this slow­ness is in con­trast with its high speed look­ing design. The objects are not meant to work, and per­haps will nev­er be built to full scale, how­ev­er the con­struc­tion of the mod­els is con­sid­ered, refined and precise.

Greg Bourke is study­ing media arts at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tas­ma­nia. Ear­li­er ( 1998) he grad­u­at­ed with a diplo­ma in design and desk­top pub­lish­ing. In 2000 he received The Dean’s Roll of Excel­lence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tas­ma­nia. In 2001 Bourke exhib­it­ed in the “Mars Attack” exhi­bi­tion at Hobart, Tasmania.

Red (V.3)

instal­la­tion, 2001, by Leigh Hobba

Red is the sec­ond in a tril­o­gy of works, Red, White and the Blues (1997–2001).

Red is a response to a jour­ney from the Edge of Aus­tralia to the Cen­tre. Two rocks from the bed of the old­est riv­er on the plan­et, click togeth­er in response to an audi­ence approach. A record­ing of a brief, light show­er of rain falling into the riv­er, plays into the space. Some audio manip­u­la­tion of the “click” res­onates through the space. The rocks were select­ed for their sound from all the pos­si­bil­i­ties one has when wan­der­ing down a dry, rock strewn riv­er bed. They are ancient rocks – the click is a clock– the “time­less­ness” of the old­est con­ti­nent and the process of change through weath­er­ing this clock against our fleet­ing inter­ac­tion with the plan­et. The process is con­nect­ed to mechan­i­cal based inter­ac­tion (sole­noid and electro/mechanical trig­ger eg pres­sure mat or light beam) which also trig­gers the sound soft­ware — this wraps the metaphor — time­less nat­ur­al ele­ments — inter­ven­tion and con­trol as a con­tem­po­rary condition.

Leigh Hob­ba cur­rent­ly lives and works in Hobart Tas­ma­nia. Since the 1970s his sound and video instal­la­tions were exhib­it­ed wide­ly across Aus­tralia and abroad. His inter­dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tice includes instal­la­tions, videos, per­for­mances, cura­to­r­i­al work and he has also pub­lished wide­ly, Notably Hob­ba curat­ed “Pulse Fic­tion” (1995) an exhibition/survey of art and atti­tudes affect­ed by the first wave of artists access to media tech­nolo­gies and strate­gies of media based art works through the 1960s and 1970s in Aus­tralia and “Imme­di­ate” (2001) — Instal­la­tions that address issues in New Media practice.

Here

instal­la­tion, 2000, by Andrew Burrell

The work “Here” presents the view­er with an inter­nal dia­logue, both sin­gle sided and con­ver­sa­tion­al — cir­cu­lar in nature- with no begin­ning or end. This dia­logue is con­tained with­in two small draw­ers and accessed audi­bly by the view­er each time one or both are opened. Per­haps here real­ly is a place we can­not leave?

Each of the two box­es have a draw­er that upon open­ing allows one half of a con­ver­sa­tion to be played. Only when the view­er real­izes that the voic­es with­in each box are in con­ver­sa­tion and has both draw­ers opened at once, will they hear the com­plete dialogue.

Andrew Bur­rell grad­u­at­ed from the Syd­ney Col­lege of the Arts with an MFA in 2000. He has had solo exhi­bi­tions as far back as 1992 and par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al group shows across Aus­tralia. Since 1999 Bur­rell has been inten­sive­ly involved in the Polar Cir­cuit project in Lap­land and spent a res­i­den­cy lead­ing up to Finnish exhi­bi­tions at Inari, Lap­land in 2001.