4.6 Ecologies of Place
Tracks
Track 6
| Tuesday, June 25, 2024 |
| 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM |
| Plaza P10 |
Speaker
Mr Nick Atkins
University of Technology Sydney / Operated Coin
FP: Message Bank: Time in Location-Based Media
10:30 AM - 10:55 AMAbstract
This research follows the development and prototyping of a team working on the creation of Message Bank, a new digital theatre event using location-based media. It offers a specific focus on the narrative development and prototyping of the project as documented through observations of an active participant in the work in the lead up to the shows premiere at Sydney Festival 2023. Observations presented point toward the structuring of time and its relationship to narrative as a key challenge and oversight encountered by the team. Responding to this challenge, a performance score was created to iterate the project over three prototypes. The performance score is present-ed here as documentation of the team’s process and as an out-come of this research. The observations and score is a contribution to a growing body of frameworks seeking to support theatre makers in the creation of new work using location-based media.
Biography
Nick is a theatre maker and producer focused on new writing and digital theatre. His work has been shortlisted for the Patrick White and Rodney Seaborn Awards and presented by companies including Sydney Festival, Riverside Theatres, Q Theatre as well as Casula Powerhouse. Nick has held senior artistic and advocacy roles across the arts sector including as; director, new work for Q Theatre, chair of Theatre Network NSW, member of Create NSW’s Artform Advisory Board (Theatre), co-artistic director of Crack Theatre Festival (TiNA) and board member of PACT. He has completed cultural fellowships for the City of Parramatta, Create NSW and has been artist in residence with Bundanon, UNSW, Centre D’Art Marnay Sur-Seine (France) and NES Artist Residency (Iceland). He is currently a PhD candidate with the Creativity and Cognition Studios, UTS and leads the creative studio Operated Coin based on Darug Country in Parramatta.
Dr Martina Mrongovius
Art Producer
Lake Arts Precinct
AT: Shaping and Weaving the Lake Arts Precinct
10:55 AM - 11:20 AMAbstract
This constellation of projects across the Lake Arts Precinct on Awabakal Country seeks to create connection by weaving stories and shaping place. Compositions of sound, light, sculpture, inhabitation and landscape are embedded with concrete forms, ephemeral activations, and location-based media. The projects, some complete others ongoing, are guided by the voices of artists, the Lake Arts team, participants and the MAC yapang Aboriginal Reference Group.
Through these projects and activities, the Lake Arts Precinct aims to foster connected experiences that speak with culture and creativity. We invite the Everywhen back into place.
Through these projects and activities, the Lake Arts Precinct aims to foster connected experiences that speak with culture and creativity. We invite the Everywhen back into place.
Biography
Dr Martina Mrongovius employs holographic design to shape place, imagery and experiences. Since 2021 she has been developing the Lake Arts Precinct for Lake Macquarie City Council on Awabakal Country in Australia. Before this she was the Creative Director of the Center for the Holographic Arts – HoloCenter in New York for 11 years. During this time she worked with numerous artists to produce major holographic works, implemented programs to support experimentation with emergent media and established the HoloCenter exhibition program.
Martina completed her PhD about the role of movement in encountering holographic images, through the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory at RMIT University in 2012. Her holograms have been exhibited as solo shows in Berlin, Seoul, Melbourne, Cologne, Ghent and New York as well as being part of group shows in Taiwan, Canada, UK and Portugal. She has collaboratively created a comic book adventure game and other participatory art experiences across cities and on waterways.
Martina's academic teaching spans design, science and art with RMIT University, Korea National University of Arts, Kun Shan University in Taiwan, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. In New York she also collaborated with The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, Urban Glass and Eyebeam to develop workshops that explored expanded imaging, holography and montage.
Ms Emma McRae
The University of Melbourne
PIC: Performing an Urban Digital Twin: Diffracting the City Imaginary
11:20 AM - 11:35 AMAbstract
Urban digital twins are described as virtual replicas or representations of physical space. Through an autoethnographic encounter with Digital Twin Victoria alongside visual demonstrations by and interviews with spatial industry professionals, this paper analyses two performances of the digital twin to diffract the city imaginary it presents. By visualising the city within the computational standards and selective layering of geolocated datasets, the digital twin produces a singular vision of a perpetual present. When navigated with digital skill and aligned through a ‘comforting’ aerial view, the digital twin performs an expected, beautiful city. Yet as I, lacking such skill, clumsily descend to street level, it performs an increasingly monstrous city. With reference to Australian artist Stelarc’s Exoskeleton and French artist ORLAN’s surgical performances, I analyse my failure to perform the coherent city to demonstrate how such performances reveal the politics of failure and challenge normalised expectations of what it is to be human, to be beautiful or to be a city. I argue that paying attention to the visions revealed within moments of failure, or gaps within the standards, contributes to reframing such moments as openings to alternative city imaginaries.
Biography
Emma McRae is an Australian curator and writer currently undertaking a PhD in Human Geography at the University of Melbourne. Her work explores questions of agency and responsibility in sociotechnical practices. Her PhD research focusses on how digital visual technologies participate in enacting current realities and predicted futures in urban environments.
Session chair
Leah Barclay
Discipline Lead of Design
University of the Sunshine Coast
