ghost[s] and the[ir] machine[s]

Interactive designs by postgraduate students in the Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts led by studio master Dr. Lian Loke will explore the theme of excavating the future in an interactive installation. The Old Darlington School managed by the Sydney Conservatorium, will offer the backdrop for the interactive pieces, with the mirrored history of play, of industriousness, and of creativity.

Ghost[s] and the[ir] machines evokes the experience of Cockatoo Island in Sydney’s Harbour through design elements such as time, place and occupied space in comparison to former and current inhabitants. Interactive instruments will produce a means for participants to sift through the past to pave a way forward, and excavate towards the future as a way of making sense of the past. Their works make strange the perception and remembrance of space by equipping participants with technology for bodily interaction with the space. The design elements from Cockatoo Island are pulled through and remixed in the Old Darlington School to form contact surfaces between Cockatoo Island’s history, the Old Darlington School, and the participants.

The result of a body probe method, in discovering the elements of the space, involved trace-making and strange or dislocated play in these dark, decorative, industrial, and apparently haunted spaces. Curator Deborah Turnbull aimed for the design theme to re-create a similar environment as a backdrop for the students’ interactive designs, with the theme of ghostly traces and how they affect interactivity tangentially as a medium and in terms of the tools they are creating experience with.

Photography by | Baki Kocaballi

ATTRACT::RELATE::SUSTAIN

The theme of this exhibition is interconnectivity, and the programming, coding, model-making and aesthetics that comprises contemporary interaction design. The notion of 'daisy-chains' will be at the forefront on this interconnectivity, both in the form of a large mechanical device made up of independent machines; but also as an installation technique, in terms connecting the machines representative of a research facility's theoretical output and the lecturer's who inspire and guide it (with an emphasis on the links between the students and their mentors). To support this metaphor, along with the larger device, there will be projected films, touch tables, the SmartSlab interactive works from URAP; along with historical and iterative artefacts from previous prototypes.

Photographs by | Lightpop Photography

Stop Motion Animation by | Scixors

INTERACTING: Art, Research & the Creative Practitioner

A publication edited by Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds – Libri Publishing, UK

This book is about interacting in its many forms, including interaction between artworks and audiences, between creative practitioners from different disciplines and between those practitioners and the norms of research in contemporary society. Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner uses the experience of leading creative practitioners to provide a unique perspective on these interacting elements.

 As workers within the field of human-computer interaction, the editors’ interest in creativity in art, design and technology has led them to develop methodologies for research capable of producing evidence simultaneously with the creation of new artefacts. They and the other contributors, all of whom have been associated with the Creativity and Cognition Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney, demonstrate both that there is much to recommend in the bringing of research into creative practice and also that research itself can be transformed by way of creative practice.

With the launch night featuring performances by David Burraston, Andrew Johnston and Ernest Edmonds, and an artwork by Damian Hills, the Queen Street Studios will be an amazing and raw space with which to emphasize the experimental nature of the work and to introduce the book to Australian audiences.  Attendees will be able to purchase copies of the publication on the night via Gleebooks vendors.

Ausgrid Learning Centre Sculpture & Digital Art Commission

SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATES | Site Specific Sculpture - Chris Fox and Dillon McEwan | Digital Artworks - Sohan Hayes

SHORT LIST CANDIDATES | Mark Titmarsh, Julia Burns & Leigh Russell, Pamela Lee Brennar & Johannes Muljana, Lachlan Stuart-Tetlow

BACKGROUND

Ausgrid has establishing its new Learning Centre at Silverwater, and launched in August 2011. The site is primarily designed for its apprentice and employee training but also includes a contemporary Energy Efficiency Centre to promote environmental sustainability and current research and development projects to the public through a series of interactive, hands-on displays. It will also be a distributed regional site for the Grid Gallery, the first urban screen dedicated solely to the ongoing exhibition of media art.

Photography by | Aram Dulyan

Urban Realities & Augmented Play

The School of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and the Design Lab at the University of Sydney (USYD) are collaborating along the themes of augmented reality and urban playgrounds. This collaboration, managed by New Media Curation, is titled Urban Realities & Augmented Play. The project will consist of a joint exhibition, launch, and publication; all of which will serve as a public platform for emerging interaction design students. On launch night, students, industry experts and academics, and the general public converge to create an environment of creativity and experimentation.

Photographs by | Aram Dulyan