Screen x Sound 2021
Artworks are best experienced using headphones.
ds_admin2023-07-18T23:43:54+00:00
STONEFLY / HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
STONEFLY / HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
STONEFLY
HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:14:49+00:00
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… / ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… / ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON…
ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:15:37+00:00
AM I AWAKE NOW? / ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
AM I AWAKE NOW? / ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
AM I AWAKE NOW?
ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:21:12+00:00
IN/OUT / LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
IN/OUT / LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
IN/OUT
LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:22:10+00:00
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 / MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 / MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13
MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:36:30+00:00
FOR JULIET / TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
FOR JULIET / TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
FOR JULIET
TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:23:52+00:00
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS / JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS / JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS
JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:24:40+00:00
DELUXE WASH / TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
DELUXE WASH / TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
DELUXE WASH
TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:25:27+00:00
1, 2, 3, KISS / YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.
1, 2, 3, KISS / YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.
1, 2, 3, KISS
YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.
Screen x Sound 2021
Artworks are best experienced using headphones.
ds_admin2023-07-18T23:43:54+00:00
STONEFLY / HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
STONEFLY / HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
STONEFLY
HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:14:49+00:00
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… / ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… / ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON…
ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:15:37+00:00
AM I AWAKE NOW? / ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
AM I AWAKE NOW? / ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
AM I AWAKE NOW?
ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:21:12+00:00
IN/OUT / LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
IN/OUT / LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
IN/OUT
LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:22:10+00:00
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 / MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 / MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13
MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:36:30+00:00
FOR JULIET / TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
FOR JULIET / TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
FOR JULIET
TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:23:52+00:00
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS / JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS / JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS
JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:24:40+00:00
DELUXE WASH / TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
DELUXE WASH / TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
DELUXE WASH
TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:25:27+00:00
1, 2, 3, KISS / YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.
1, 2, 3, KISS / YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.
1, 2, 3, KISS
YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.
Screen x Sound 2021
Artworks are best experienced using headphones.
ds_admin2023-07-18T23:43:54+00:00
STONEFLY / HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
STONEFLY / HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
STONEFLY
HUDSON WALLIS GRANT
My main approach to making STONEFLY was to draw the viewer into the unseen world that is bubbling beneath the surface of the rivers, creeks and streams around Naarm. I wanted to disrupt the notion that the unseen is unavailable; an affliction that leads us further into an othering of nature and keeps our empathy reserved only for what we can immediately relate to. The piece introduces the viewer into a diverse and colourful world through a portal of texture and sound. This world travels on a vastly different timescale and harbours microscopic detail in every drop of water. I shot the piece with the help of aquatic scientist and macroinvertebrate specialist Edward Tsyrlin and collected all specimens for the piece in the Birrarung/Yarra river that flows through Warrandyte. All specimens were responsibly caught and released and all precautions were taken to ensure their safety and survival. The piece is meant to be enthralling, with a sense of focus on subject while also maintaining an accessibility and visual momentum. I hope in viewing the piece the potential is realised for what can be seen not only when looking up and out, but also down and in.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:14:49+00:00
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… / ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… / ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON…
ANNE HSUYIN
BATTLE THEME! ON AND ON AND ON… depicts the ongoing raging war against COVID-19 as a level to be cleared in the game of life. Yet, as the fight continues in Melbourne, people grow weary; where order and system collapse, dissent and chaos take hold. This work draws a parallel between the surreal games of the 90s and the bizarre experience of living in lockdown. It portrays the sounds of the virus and of society’s response to it, set against a repeating battle theme that distorts more and more as the work continues. Underneath the disturbingly cheery game music are opinions, protests, and hospital alarms, which tell the story of a nightmarish year as case numbers rise, people die, and riots break out.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:15:37+00:00
AM I AWAKE NOW? / ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
AM I AWAKE NOW? / ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
AM I AWAKE NOW?
ANNE WAGNER
We are cascading towards hell on earth with catastrophic climate breakdown. Human greed is bringing us to the brink of our mother turning to fire, shrivelling in drought, drowning in ocean water, with lives already displaced and lost all around our planet. The piece AM I AWAKE NOW? is an oneironaut investigation video that explores the leaking of the artists’ felt eco-anxiety into their dream realm. As Gaston Bachelard notes, “we find ourselves at a pivotal point around which reciprocal interpretations of dreams through thought and thought through dreams, keep turning.” Through the use of layering, AM I AWAKE NOW? is a dream of liquid, a feeling of drowning and sounds of seismic blasting. Will we wake up to act on the climate crisis? Will we keep looping in a vertical daydream?
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:21:12+00:00
IN/OUT / LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
IN/OUT / LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
IN/OUT
LEPIDOPTERA
IN/OUT by Lepidoptera is a collaboration between Kiera Varrese and Jess Healy. This song encapsulates and explores our mind and processes. Life can be tough, some tend to suppress their emotions and pour every inch of being into work, rather than allowing themselves to be introspective; to explore who they are and how to take care of their mind, body and spirit. IN/OUT represents the feeling of being overwhelmed. It follows the path our neurons take in our brain whenever we have a stressful thought or become overloaded. Though the song is two minutes and ten seconds long it symbolises only a split second in time, represented by an inhale at the beginning and an exhale to round it off. This piece had to be created over a string of zoom calls due to COVID restrictions. Although this was a challenging circumstance for the artists, they were excited to find their individual ideas flowed into the others seamlessly, resulting in a song they are incredibly proud of that will resonate with many listeners.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:22:10+00:00
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 / MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 / MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13
MOHAMED CHAMAS
DESERT MISSION 8: GHARIB MONUMENT VER3.13 is a video artwork using footage taken from a game engine. The assets featured in the video include custom shaders, 3D models and geometry made with photogrammetry software. It parodies military aesthetics appearing in entertainment media, videogame interfaces and affectionate digital communications – especially with family overseas. An anonymous player explores a virtual terrain created using heightmaps of the artist’s own motherland. Cursed and blessed imagery appears, contextualized by gamified feedback cues and sound effects. The video attempts to subtly provoke the third-culture memory in a dreamlike convolution, narrated by a perplexing, invisible NPC (non-playable character). The chaotic and ‘meme-like’ qualities present juxtaposed with both religious and militarized symbols aims fill the psychic gap between videogame pop cultures and orientalised bodies. What’s problematized here is perhaps entertainment media as an extension of military training software and the position migrant groups (and their generations) have in the settler nations which consume and create it.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:36:30+00:00
FOR JULIET / TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
FOR JULIET / TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
FOR JULIET
TASH ATKINS
FOR JULIET uses text from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to create a queer retelling of the classic love story. The composition combines Algorave (music created using code) and classical singing techniques to create an atmospheric love song. This is a new experimental composition practice for Tash, celebrating their training as a classical singer and combining it with electronic music-making techniques. This work was originally devised to use the rhythms of the industrial space around the Signal building next to Flinders Street Station; the noise of the train line, quickening footsteps in rush hour, the construction of the city. Musical storytelling is used to create an experimental soundscape for exploring how rhythm and modernity can impact how we perceive music. By creating music for urban public spaces, we break down the barriers to accessing art. Furthermore, it dismantles the classist barriers to art. This piece tells a modern love story, now in a public digital space, and creates a musical conversation between historical classical music, code and the rhythms of your listening environment. FOR JULIET challenges the listener to examine what they think of classical music and create a point of entry for new interest and accessibility within the medium.
Cover image: Eman Ezekiel
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:23:52+00:00
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS / JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS / JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS
JENN TRAN
GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS is a video work that explores the lithium-ion battery supply chain and the stark contradictory realities it holds with us as consumers. Inspired by journalist Todd C. Frankel’s lithium-ion investigation for ‘The Washington Post’, Google Earth images and 3D animation chronicle battery minerals and the developing countries that mine them. Using written statements in parallel, lithium power plays as a concept of contradiction. While lithium-ion batteries can power ‘greenfutures’ in developed countries, mineral extraction leaves landowners and miners—namely Indigenous peoples—powerless. Inspired by animators such as Pia Borg and Claudia Larcher, GOD IS IN THE MOUNTAINS touches on topics about consumer and corporate honesty, wealth and health equality, territory, technology, mining, environment, and the question of for whom do we really manufacture power? Quote attributions here.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:24:40+00:00
DELUXE WASH / TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
DELUXE WASH / TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
DELUXE WASH
TYLER BAIN
Primarily recorded at Fitzroy’s Expresso Car Wash, DELUXE WASH is an attempt to explore the seemingly mundane. It is structured around an automatic car wash cycle and the subsequent emotional and nostalgic response that the cycle elicits. Through narration and the manipulation of field recordings and samples, the car wash is utilised as a vessel through which I investigate my relationship with sound, as well as my personal experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder – in particular my daily compulsive hand washing. Additionally, the piece attempts to subvert the traditionally dour world of sound art with a slightly comedic approach. An ode to the transportive effects of listening, DELUXE WASH is best experienced in the dark.
ds_admin2023-07-19T00:25:27+00:00
1, 2, 3, KISS / YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.
1, 2, 3, KISS / YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.
1, 2, 3, KISS
YUNDI WANG
The artwork 1, 2, 3, KISS was made from two pieces of footage. One was shot on Upfield Bike Path near Poplar Oval, Parkville, somewhere like (-37.7805513, 144.9566207) on 26 July 2021 around 9 pm. The other was shot on the Flemington Bridge sometime before 26 July 2021. The soundtrack consisted of various environmental sounds, guitar, voice, birds. At the time I was making the video, I had recently moved to a new place where I encountered the train daily. The train 哐当哐当(kuangdangkuangdang) greets me in the morning. Sometimes I would sit in the dark, waiting for that bright-lit film-strip-like train to pass by the window. When the train is passing, I feel like whatever was in my mind has been interrupted. When it passes, it also temporarily takes away my thoughts. But this is not about the train, it is never about the train. To escape a little, I guess.