Large-scale projections onto urban architecture are an increasingly established form of public art, dazzling audiences and re-narrating the places and structures they are projected onto. This article examines one such projection work,... more
Large-scale projections onto urban architecture are an increasingly established form of public art, dazzling audiences and re-narrating the places and structures they are projected onto. This article examines one such projection work, Thinking Spaces, a two-week installation on the campus of the Australian National University in 2013. The artists sought to use the indistinct, fleeting, and ghostly aspects of illumination to practice a non-representational poetics of affect, re-inscribing a documented archive of relationships and “thinking spaces” onto present-day facades of selected university buildings. The article explores the creation of this artwork through three distinct layers: its historical site-specificity, as it related to the documentary archive from which it drew; its focus on rendering temporal geographies as non-representational, affective spatial practices; and the atmospheres that the artworks co-constituted with visitors. In doing so, this article adopts a necessarily interdisciplinary approach to describing the practices through which place, time, and spatial experience might be investigated through projection and illumination.
While rupture has been a generative form of political intervention within art, ‘On Resonance in Contemporary Site-Specific Projection Art’ proposes that an equally necessary element connecting aesthetics and politics is art’s desire to... more
While rupture has been a generative form of political intervention within art, ‘On Resonance in Contemporary Site-Specific Projection Art’ proposes that an equally necessary element connecting aesthetics and politics is art’s desire to forge connections with the provisional community of the audience. Through a consideration of the large-scale exhibit ‘Land|Slide: Possible Futures,’ the author explores examples of contemporary site-specific projection art that formally seek a sense resonance within the viewer. The article argues works in 'Land|Slide' encourage a productive unfixing of the borders between media and spaces, effectively encouraging embodied, intersubjective engagements between art and audience. The author examines the performative structures of particular screen-based works included in the exhibition. The article claims that gestures of connection and collaboration between object, screen, site, and viewer within these works pose an important counterpoint to threats of aesthetic co-optation under neoliberalism.
"This document reveals the events that took place following the break-up of Emily Brown and Stephen Kelly - a fictional couple created by John D’Arcy. After each making over 300 friends on Facebook, the couple aired the private moments of... more
"This document reveals the events that took place following the break-up of Emily Brown and Stephen Kelly - a fictional couple created by John D’Arcy. After each making over 300 friends on Facebook, the couple aired the private moments of their break-up online and in public spaces during the week August 14th-21st in South Belfast, Northern Ireland. The series ‘Emily Brown is now single’ explored a range of techniques for presenting narrative in public spaces, including sound, video, fly-posting, interactive software, found objects, live performance and a flash mob. Each event in the series is discussed here in detail, including script and technical requirements, context within existing practice, and reactions of the public. Documentation techniques are also discussed, along with reflections on the project and considerations for future development.
This essay argues that contemporary projection art functions as an important space of aesthetic protest. I consider how projection art is able to build sites of intersubjective exchange between spectators, artists and art. I look at... more
This essay argues that contemporary projection art functions as an important space of aesthetic protest. I consider how projection art is able to build sites of intersubjective exchange between spectators, artists and art. I look at projection art that explores the thresholds between onscreen bodies and spaces alongside the spaces and embodied audiences outside the architecture of the screen. I am interested in how the formal indexing and animation of these thresholds constructs aesthetic spaces of protest that produce liminal sites of viewing engagement. I argue a key aesthetic principle of projection art is found in its performative reimagining of spatial contexts. By undermining traditional viewing structures and conditions, projection art explores alternative forms of visual exchange that create a greater awareness in viewers of their own body and subject positions. My reading contends that by situating spectators as embodied viewer-participants works by Shirin Neshat and Krzysztof Wodiczko open up a sense of relatedness that calls viewers to recognition, greater awareness and perhaps action.
Designing novel interaction concepts for urban environments is not only a technical challenge in terms of scale, safety, portability and deployment, but also a challenge of designing for social configurations and spatial settings. To... more
Designing novel interaction concepts for urban environments is not only a technical challenge in terms of scale, safety, portability and deployment, but also a challenge of designing for social configurations and spatial settings. To outline what it takes to
create a consistent and interactive experience in urban space, we describe the concept and multidisciplinary design process of VR/Urban’s media intervention tool called Spread.gun, which was created for the Media Façade Festival 2008 in Berlin. Main design aims were the anticipation of urban space, situational system configuration and embodied interaction. This case study also reflects on the specific technical, organizational and infrastructural challenges encountered when developing media façade installations.
