A Canberra multimedia artist takes us cybertrekking through virtual landscapes of Kosciuszko National Park's Blue Water Holes
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What were your artistic beginnings?
My initial creative skills began as a painting and life drawing student in high school and college, but my passion for photography and later digital imaging emerged during the early 1990s at the University of Canberra while studying my Bachelor of Arts in Communication. My drawing and painting had taught me to see and translate forms and composition, while the realism and ability to frame and represent reality with photography and ultimately manipulate and distort the image realism with computer based applications caught my imagination.
What are your inspirations?
I am inspired by the Australian landscape; the diversity of beautiful, precious and unique environments are truly awesome. I am also captivated with the strength of the human spirit and the convictions of those who fight for community issues. I regularly attend and document rallies and protests in Canberra, focusing on the individuals within the crowd who
believe that one can make a difference through supporting these events. Music is also central to my creative inspirations, especially the poetry and musical genius of U2, Radiohead and Jamiroquai. I am very excited about the forthcoming POPMart tour of U2 in February as their combination of great music and amazing visuals on a huge LCD screen will be a phenominal cyberdelic experience... I just wish I had better tickets.
Why do work in the medium you work in?
Multimedia tools and applications give me the ability to creatively represent, manipulate and alter our perceptions of environments and events in a virtually realistic form. As a photographer, I love the opportunity to explore landscape and be physically involved in documenting events, while the digital darkroom applications offer me amazing precision and
control to manipulation and disseminate the captured image to the world. I feel empowered by the digital revolution to express myself and reconstruct realities around me.
What are the pleasures of working in this medium?
I take great pleasure in photographing environments, to travel to places and emersed myself in the landscape, the light and colours, and to capture an image, a document of the moment. I particularly love natural environments, pristine and untouched beauty, but also thoroughly enjoy documenting and looking at urban landscapes, of manmade constructions and developments. I am also a social being and voyeur of human behaviour and
collect images of people. Working with digital applications allows me to develop my work at home in my own space with very efficient production rates, and gives me more time to spend with my partner Mr Rew and our two dogs.
Who or what is the source of encouragement and support of your work?
My partner Mr Rew (known online as Channel Rew) is my number one support as we have been together and shared common interests in digital media for over six years. His work Memonic Plague, a Channel Rew Production, incorporates
digitised and manipulated video of alternative art exhibitions, skateboarding, raves and community rallies and events around Canberra.
Do you see your art as political?
I have been involved with community activism and documenting rallies subversive to the Government's political line for many years. My first art work of political activism is featured in Channel Rew's Memonic Plague titled the "Anti-Nuclear Virus"and
was developed around the 1995 South Pacific Nuclear Testing issues and subsequent rallies. I have more recently been involved in defending Native Title and the High Court's Wik decision by documenting and filming the Sea of Hands rallies outside Parliament House. I intend to translate these images and recordings into an virtual exhibition of the issues and speakers who never get commercial television coverage and of the strength of community activism in Canberra.
Do you make your art with a specific audience in mind?
My work is developed for multimedia and internet dissemination, and is enjoyed by kids and adults who are not afraid to move a mouse. Blue Water Holes CyberTrek, and other CyberTreks currently being developed, are designed to capture the imagination of people from all ages from across the wired world. The CyberTreks are visually saturated with amazing imagery of places and people, natural looping rhythms of sound recordings, and low on written information. Specifically, I envisage that most interest in my work comes from people who are comfortable with screen based representations of reality, who could use the CyberTreks to compare my view of the world with their experiences of geographical identity. People whose interests are in photography, new forms of landscape representation, and the subcultures of Australia's Capital city will be fascinated by CyberTrek. The project aims to capture a 'new breed' perspective of these places, illustrating new ways of seeing and appreciating the landmarks and cultural icons that exist in urban, suburban and natural environments.
Is the possible sale and marketability of your work a contributing factor in their overall appearance?
Capturing and creating a seamless 360 degree panoramic representation of an environment has many marketable applications and I have developed the photographic and digital skills to pursue a career in making fantastic Quicktime VRs of landscapes all over Australia and the world. My ultimate
dream is to be commissioned to continue developing CyberTreks in the surviving natural landscapes of the planet so everyone can virtually experience these places without physically damaging them, and contribute to the perceived value and protection of environments under threat.
I particularly respect and admire Indigenous people and their traditional relationship with the land. To have survived the invasion and dispossession of land and assimilation policies of Australia over the past 210 years demonstrates the spiritual strength of Aboriginal people, art and culture. I am a big fan of "Star Trek Voyager" and admire the ultimate CyberTrekker Captain Kathryn Janeway!! She is a strong and adventurous role model to have emerged from the American electronic imperialism we are constantly bombarded with.
How has the "digital revolution" and changes in technology impacted on you personally, your art and artists around you?
Digital imaging has greatly affected my creative process and the way I represent reality and issues. Quicktime VR, for example, has allowed me to simulate landscape in a new way, the seamless 360 degree panorama is unique to digital imaging and captures an illusion we could never view in reality... one flat image of an unwrapped all encompassing position. The ability for equal access to information (as long as you have access to the equipment) via the internet has opened up the biggest virtual exhibition space ever conceived. Having the communication network and information resources to check out other artists work from a screen gives ultimate research and learning opportunities as well as exhibiting yourself without the need for curators liking your creation. Concepts of freedom, expanded (virtual) reality and imagination have evolved with the digital revolution, particularly in artistic mediums which have converged with digital applications.
Is multimedia going to change the way we view art, because the spectator becomes active rather than passive?
Interactivity is a fundamental concept of multimedia in that the traditional viewer of precious art objects becomes a cruser - creative user- in that they frame and determine their experience of the work. My Quicktime VR work relies on the cruser to explore and simulate ways of seeing photographic imagery. The mouse, directed by the cruiser, can pan around the image, up and down, and zoom in and out, before digital video links to the next panorama site. The cruser frames their own image of a scene, just as a photographer frames an image in the landscape. I have found that kids respond best to multimedia as they want to be involved in the virtual experience of the CyberTrek, whereas adults tend to want to be shown rather than explore the work themselves. As the youth of today take on new technology to express themselves, the technophobia and future shock many adults experience with these new mediums will divide art critics as to what is art, good art, popular art and high art... although the boundaries have always blurred and broken down by the advent of new techniques and mediums.
Are more men working in multimedia art because of the generally male dominated nature of the computer industry?
As a woman working with multimedia and teaching others these new creative tools, I have found it has been getting easier for anyone to create multimedia art because the applications and software are becoming more user friendly. I also feel boys generally have the advantage over girls because of the nature of computer games don't take girls interests into account and the market is focused on the male shoot-em-up war games consumer. As kids, and especially the girls, are encouraged to use computers in schools and at home as a fun, creative learning tool, I think perceptions of digital technology will become more positive for everyone, regardless of gender or race.
Has the computer ever crashed and you've lost six months of work?
Yes!! Always back up your work, two or even three times... I have learnt my lesson the hard way by trusting an external hard drive which one day died for no reason and all my work was lost. I have also experienced a few nightmares at art school where we share facilities. One day I came to do some work only to find someone had trashed my entire folder so they could have more space! Thank God I now have my own computer... sharing access and space is a very painful way to work.
How far can and will interactive technology go?
Beyond the final frontier of the mind!! We are already seeing places without physically going there, and seeing them in a simulated way. The Mars Pathfinder images for example were translated into Quicktime VR for all to interact with and vitually gaze at on the web. I think the future is already here, we just have to catch up with it as it takes time to
filter through the layers and boundaries of culture. It won't be long before you are surfing the net on your television, it will just be another channel to do research and entertainment on, checking out the latest games and interactive titles. Just keep watching science fiction for hints of what the future holds.. it's uncanny how many predictions and stories of how we can use and abuse technology have come true in the last ten years - "Resistance is futile!".
Will multimedia and interactive art become the standard or norm, will we see the demise of other art forms?
There are no standards or norms in art, as tradition and culture produce art which is so diverse across the globe; it is the individual spirit which creates from their own unique reality. The same argument could be said about photography killing painting, or television destroying literature...
multimedia is just another tool to create with and represents the evolution of our culture, a gateway into the information society.
Where can we see more of your art?
My Website titled Blue Water Holes CyberTrek will be featured on the LOUD server as part of the Crunch project. I also have work on Channel Rew's Memeonic Plague and the Anti-Nuclear Virus, which is online at LOUD. I will hopefully have an image in February edition of Black+White photography magazine. I am also featured in the December "ArtLink" magazine emerging artists edition. This article, titled "Between Heaven and Earth" by Brook Andrew, talks about CyberTrek in the context of two other artists and the diversions from mainstream art constructs.
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Created on Wed, 7 Jan 1998 and last modified on Tue, 27 Jan 1998.
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