C/_UV(/\ archangle - installations \/)VU

installations

josh wodak ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Emergence

Emergence is an interactive poly-media installation that is a hybrid beast of electronic theatre, performance art and pre-recorded multi-channel cinema integrated into a live audience-controlled film.

40-odd oddballs+missfits banded together to stage the prototype at The Studio, Sydney Opera House on October 11 and 12 2005. With two sell out shows and support from Australia Council for the Arts, we spent the following two years making the full fledged version, which premiered in a season at The Street Theatre, Canberra, followed by seasons at The Sydney Opera House Studio and Melbourne Arts House over August-September 2007. The project saw busy bodies slaving over a hot stove to make up one helluva priomordial soup. When we weren't busy making dinner, we were researching and developing Emergence into a cross-platform cross-media behemoth that feeds off bees, moths, emergent behaviour, artificial life, artificial intelligence, surrealistic theatrical experiments...and white rabid rabbits that feed off the flesh of monty's python. A national tour of regional Australia and capital cities is being organised for 2008. Visit www.buildyourownbeing.com for more details on the show and the tour.

Roles:
Director of Interface+Interaction Design, Technical Director, Audio-Visual Media System (AVMS) Designer, Concept+Script Advisor,
Associate Producer (Canberra season)

Roles for 2005 prototype:
Interface Designer, Technical Director, Multimedia Co-ordinator, AVMS Programmer, Audio-Visual Operator, Concept+Script Advisor.

Reflection

An interactive multi-media installation revolving around the premise of audience-as-artwork (via interactive reflection of audience in artwork).

Roles:
Project Coordinator, Cinematographer.

Installed at:
WWII air-raid tunnel at The Cockatoo Island Festival, Sydney 03/05.

Safety in blunders
(3forthree+3forfour+4forfour)

3forthree/A Trio of Triple Triptychs

3 stilms, each in 3x3 sections, 3 slide projectors with 3x3 canisters,
3 screens, 3 amplifiers, 3 loudspeakers for 3x3 spoken words,
3 mediums: image, location sound + speech

Stilms are interactive poly-media installations designed to explore synthetic sociality/coerced cooperation between collectives of audience members that control the real-time behaviours of the audio-visual media. Each involves three side-by-side slide projectors, with a live soundscape of environmental/location sounds and a collage composition of a triplet of spoken words, which together create a 'stilm' (still films), a cross between stills and films. The stilms are both retrospective and prospective. The use of silent images with no synchronous sound, and a live mixing of sound samples that differs with each performance is a reference to the pre-talkie days of cinema, while the three progressively more interactive interface templates probe VJ inspired forms of electronic art.

1: A Day in the Life of the City of Death
10-15 minutes, 2003-6

The stilm attempts to represent the omnipresence of death in daily life in the most sacred Hindu pilgrimage city of Banaras, in North India. The soundscape samples the experimental ethnographic film Forest of Bliss, which is about death and regeneration in Banaras, and which was the subject of my anthropology honours thesis in 2002. Through the;interveawing non-linear audio-visual narraritives of 'a day in the life', the stilm explores relationships between creation-destruction, conservation-development, sacred-profane and idealist-materialist perspectives on life-death.

2: Down to Earth Up in the Himalayas
10-15 minutes, 2003-6

This stilm is about pilgrimage, conservation and development in a landscape revered for its sacredness: the Himalayan area around the source of the Ganges. Organised around three related themes-
llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllParadoxes of Pilgrimage/
llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllfllllllllllllllllProblems of Progress/
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllflllllllllllllllllllllPurity or Pollution
-the work concerns the performance of pilgrimage amidst a backdrop of rural industrialisation. Banaras lies on the same river, and as such this stilm develops further the Stilm 1 themes of problematic human relationships to the natural environment.

3: ABACADABA (AKA grin reepercussions)
(duration determined by audience participation), 2003-6

In ABACADABA (AKA grin reepercussions) the slide projectors are amplified, and their operation is offered to three volunteers from the audience (inviting them to become co-performers in the work). A collectively orchestrated audio-visual environment is contructed, out of collages, collisions, contrasts and montages between not-so-natural built and not-so-built natural environments in India, Nepal, Tasmania, Blue Mountains, Sydney and Canberra. Shots, scenes and sequences pre-loaded into the projectors are improvised on: between different operators and between each operator and their own projector, as every slide change is amplified and processed through a series of delays, to create audio rythms which spring from the visual rythms. In response to image combinations created, I provide a 'second fiddle' laptop processed stereo soundscape. All the sound sources are mixed by another volunteer from the audience, who may shape the balance of the soundscape in tune with their own response to the images.

Roles:
Director, Producer, Photographer, Editor, Sound Designer, Interface Designer, Performer.

Performed/installed as 'A Trio of Triple Triptychs' at:
Balmain Hybrid Happenings Festival, Nov 2004,
School of Art, Australian National University (ANU), Oct 2004,
Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, (ANU), July and Oct 2004.

3forfour (what's the point of balance?)

...watch this space...
...though not for two long as your eyes will burn through the monitor before this installation is staged (t-minus a number between 1&0)...

4forfour (four on the floor)

four consecutive performance installations, which each use four projectors,
four projector screens, four laptops, four microphones, four amplifiers,
and four loudspeakers, each of which has four drivers

...watch this space...
...though not for two long as your eyes will burn through the monitor before this installation is staged (t-minus a number between 1&0)...