“The Walls” is an exploration of a set of mathematically derived three-dimensional fractal structures. The structures themselves are essentially infinite, an expression of an algorithm that continually recurs. This exploration is a small journey of that potentially infinite space. It is a selected journey from an imagined human viewpoint, a view that entangles the viewer with the structure. Boundaries do not necessarily exist in fractal structures, and the explorer finds themselves traversing space and form. What may appear to be unscalable walls are revealed to be phases between the blurred distinctions of structure and landscape.
History
ERA Category
Recorded/Rendered Creative Work - Film/Video
Funding type
Public funds
Eligible major research output?
Yes
Research Statement
Background
The Walls is an urban, media art installation that integrates bespoke animation, audio composition and the urban canvas. It is designed to engender a particular dialogue with the audience regarding the ideas of presence (Noë 2012, Lombard and Ditton 1997), and complexity. The research is situated at the intersection of low orders of complexity in the built environment as designed by urban developers and higher orders of complexity as permitted by mathematical formula, (Salingaros 2006). The notion of presence as transportation (Lombard and Ditton 1997), provides an aesthetic experience of mathematically generated landscape distanced from the actual architecture and streetscape it is incorporated within
Contribution
“The Walls” is a direct critique of the object it is projected upon and the laneway that surrounds it. Events for Public Place such as Big City Lights, tend to celebrate spectacle in one or more sensory forms. The artwork sought to usurp the spectacle by offering a massively immersive moving landscape (a 300 square metre visual field), to transport the audience away from the banality of the surface it is projected upon. The artwork is carefully created for this site, in terms of its field of view in respect to its ant’s eye perspective. It towers above the audience and uses the entirety of the streetscape for careful immersion in its spatial sound.
Significance
"The Walls" was selected by Rosie Dennis, the Artistic Director of Placemakers Gold Coast, for the Big City Lights Festival. It was exhibited in the Southport CBD from June 21 to July 7, 2024. The festival, attended by more than 15,000 people, was presented by Experience Gold Coast, The City of Gold Coast, and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, part of the Department of Treaty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Communities and the Arts.
Ag, Tanya Ravn, Susa Pop, Nerea Calvillo, and Wright, Mark. 2016. What Urban Media Art Can Do, Why When Where & How. av edition.
Lombard, Matthew, Ditton, Theresa. 1997. At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3:2, DOI 10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x
Noë, Alva. 2012. Varieties of Presence, Cambridge Mass, Harvard university Press
Salingaros Nikos, A Theory of Architecture, 2006. Umbau-Verlag, Solingen Germany
Medium
Multi-channel outdoor projection mapped video and spatial soundscape
Size of work
30 metres w x 10 metres high
Number of discrete components
1
Length of recording
5.16 minutes
Date of recording
June 2024
Duration of performance
The work played as 00:10:40 loop over four hours per night (Friday, Saturdays and Sundays) for three weeks.
Estimated size of audience
15,000
Authors of work performed
Daniel Della-Bosca, Vanessa Tomlinson, Erik Griswold