Last night I went to watch a dance performance, not knowing much about it beforehand. Approaching the venue, I recognised a scene familiar from my past.
Some years ago in a Hobart theatre I was ushered towards the door as if I was a prisoner. The audience were being led by actor wardens into a panoptikon. This was an experimental piece of theatre.
Last night I was ushered towards a reception desk, as a patient waiting for some spoof psychological testing. Audience members, apart from me, were all invited and willing. I had come unknowingly, and I felt extremely uncomfortable.
The experience of ill-ease, and of having to physically walk away, made me think how artists dream things up that are not every body’s cup of tea.
We create imaginative spaces and invite people to enter into them. These spaces are not always comfortable for everyone.
I’m inviting expeditioners and artists to to visit this site and to contribute.
Only some have responded, and they have done so generously and enthusiastically. I need to meet them and explain as much as possible what will happen to what they share with me. There needs to be a lot of trust on their side, as I really can’t say exactly what I’ll do. I,m experimenting and inventing things. I cannot know myself the imaginative space I want to make for viewers to enter into until it is made. This is the nature of art making, and of improvisation. We discover by doing, by working with materials, ideas and the technology that is at hand.
Animating takes time. Working with the material I have collected and been given, it will be a while before something of interest develops.
Until there are more animations on the site, people will not see the space I am hoping to make.
At the moment I’m animating sea level data collected in Brisbane, between 1920 and 200.
Animating this data is different from making yesterday’s objects. I hope to be able to explain how they are different when I have made something I’m happy to show.
What it means to be working with other people’s material is something I’ll have more to say about too.
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…a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a “sentiment of an invisible omniscience.” In his own words, Bentham described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”[1]