Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures
Abstract
Artistic interpretations of the city have dramatically shifted from the candid realism of cinéma vérité and photogénie into a vast range of hyperreal representations. From utopic fly-throughs of the hyper-connected Smart Cities of the future to mixed reality advertisements and social media posts that reveal the devastation of wars on private citizens. Lilium is a post-digital cine-symphonic mural that re-imagines urban regeneration by drawing citizens into a laneway transformed into a spatial soundscape and a cinematic mural that depicts a supernatural world inhabited by playful and energetic hybrid species. Overlooked cycles of life and death are expressed through disparate temporalities – generative sound and photographic compositions of human figures and decaying flora emerge, bloom, procreate, decay, and re-incarnate. According to Juhani Pallasmaa, the structures of music and cinema can be used to express the essence of temporal and spatial experience. Pallasmaa argued for dialectical combinations of external and inner mental space rather than independent boundaries of physics and time. The existential image and soundscape are explored through Pallasmaa’s ‘lived space’ – integrated with imagination, thoughts, emotions, dreams, the unconscious, memories of the past, and present experiences. Lilium offers an aesthetic reflection on the nature of decay and architecture of the city to prompt the questioning of natural life cycles. A dialogic exchange between citizens, place, space and events is fused into an experience of the mind to open a possibility for existence through ourselves and our changed perceptions of being that might free the imagination from the city’s functional and technical limitations.
Peter Thiedeke is an interdisciplinary image-maker whose practice is concerned with post-digital critique. Peter is a lecturer in Visual Art and Design at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, where he is currently a PhD Candidate. Peter has worked internationally with art and design collectives, creative agencies, publishers, technologists, designers, architects and cultural festivals. He has exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo and Buenos Aires and has received international awards from the D&AD, Association of Photographers, and Nikon Press Awards.
Andrew R. Brown’s work focuses on augmenting our creative intelligence through interactions with technological systems. His interests include algorithmic music, computational arts, music technology, creativity support systems, interaction design and music education. These passions have fuelled a range of digital media practices in interactive and algorithmic media, with performance practices in laptop live coding and interactive audio systems. His current position is Professor of Digital Arts at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.
Dr John Robert Ferguson is a post-digital/electronic musician and sound/multimedia artist based in Brisbane Australia as Head of Creative Music Technology and Senior Lecturer at Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. Prior to this he held the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in Computer Music and Multimedia at Brown University (USA) and was previously a Lecturer in Music and Creative Music Technology at Kingston University London. John builds and performs electronic instruments and audio-visual systems that foreground tactile interaction, his work explores various exhibition/performance spaces and seeks renewal through continuous engagement with varied and ever-evolving technologies.