the indirect Object
PSYCHOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE
2016-2018
Psychology of Landscape is a multi-year exploration of the relationship between place and emotional and social space.
Each project takes place in near or complete darkness for most of the journey. By removing the visual, and our collective textual understanding of familiar images, we aim to bring participants closer to a raw, emotional, physiological and psychological experience. Seeing might be believing, but just because we’ve “seen” it – doesn’t mean we “understand”.
No participants were filmed, photographed, or audio recorded. Their experiences were theirs alone.
Verbatim
March 22-24 2018
March 25 season extended
Produced by Footscray Community Arts Centre
presented at the Footscray Community Arts Centre
as part of Festival of Live Art
Verbatim told the first person stories of two families living with intergenerational mental illness. These were our families.
Growing up with a parent with mental illness, and living with your own, can challenge your understanding of yourself, your relationships and your place in the world; but this shared experience can also bring you closer together. Raw, honest, and insightful, Verbatim opened a window onto the intricate and contradictory bonds families with intergenerational mental illness share.
Presented as an immersive live art journey for one. Participants encountered the performer’s personal stories through words, projection, and song, in a series of rooms and spaces throughout Footscray Community Arts Centre. The journey ends with meeting the artists and their families as themselves – vulnerable, complex, human.
Fresh Mountain Breeze
Sept 23 2017
Footscray Community Arts Centre
A spatially simplified, and texturally reimagined performance of Echo Chamber/Breath was presented by Footscray Community Arts Centre for West of What? a one day festival of intimate experimental arts performances.
Moore Sweet Dreams
August 11-12 2017
Due West Immersive Arts Festival
Moore Sweet Dreams is an intimate journey where art and life collide.
Using our own home as a site-specific installation, visitors were greeted as a guest, and encouraged to explore the sights, smells, objects and sounds of our creative and personal lives. Each room told a different story about life on Moore Street.
As a sonic landscape, Moore Street is diverse and textured - while the noise of constant traffic and trucks dominates, it's also filled with birdsong, laughing neighbours, music, parties, and the occasional helicopter or hot air balloon.
The live street sounds under 5 metres from the front door combined with field recordings, sound design, domestic objects, light, projection and one room transformed in to a camera obscura - to create a powerful dreamscape filled with unexpected sounds and playful vibrations.
Echo Chamber/Breath
Jan 2 - Feb 17 2017
Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts
Echo Chamber/Breath was an examination of personal space and vulnerability in urban environments. The objective was to capture environmental sounds and use these to develop a sound and touch based performance. The performance was one-on-one, 10 minutes in duration, and held inside a multi-room installation.
The majority of the experience took place in near or total darkness and was impossible to document visually. Through this approach we asked: can sound and touch alone transcend the visual to bring a new, personal depth and nuance to the urban landscapes we see every day?
Echo Chamber/Witness
Sept 29 - Oct 1 2016
This is Not Art. (TiNA) / Crack Theatre Festival
Setting the Stages / Victoria
Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts
A 10-minute sound and object live-art experience, transporting participants to the beaches of Lesvos, Greece.
In June and July 2016, we worked as volunteers in Greece helping to build a new Refugee Camp outside of Thessaloniki. During this time, we meticulously recorded the unexpected, and overlooked sounds encountered and collected objects from the debris of scuttled camps. Echo Chamber/Witness did not offer an interpretation of world politics, nor did it push an agenda. Witness was a sonic and tactile record of our personal experiences. By examining spectatorship and empathy, we posed a question, and not a solution, although we outlined the socially inclusive and progressive ethos of the experimental camp we helped build.