Totem
/ Translight
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2012, 11,500 x 3,200 x 3,200
cm, Aluminium, Galvanised Steel, Robotics, Laser
Projectors
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Totem is an interactive spatial robot.
It has 108 reconfigurable petals and is able to react to
pedestrian movement. Totem incorporates a laser projection
artwork titled "Translight" that projects nightly onto the
Eastern wall of the Perth Arena. Totem / Translight is a
permanent public art commission installed at the Perth
Arena.
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| Spiral |
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2012, 9,000 x 2,000 x 2,000 cm,
Granite, Stainless Steel
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Spiral is an ascending, twisting, form
- with a complex faceted white granite base and an
interlocking geometric superstructure.of stainless steel
prisms. This work is a permanent public art
commission and is installed at the of the Western
Australian Police Headquarters in Northbridge, at the
corner of Roe and Fitzgerald Streets.
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| Floribots |
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2005, 800 x 400 x 120 cm,
Robotics, Origami, Stainless Steel, Auto Lacquer,
Hardboard
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Floribots consists of 128
computer-controlled robot origami flowers, arranged in an
8-by-16 grid and spread over 35 square metres of floor
space. Each robot flower is able to extend telescopically
from a rest condition to grow one metre vertically, then
suddenly invert its origami “flower” into an open “bloom”
state. The unit can also re-contract back down into its
latent condition and refold its origami bloom back into a
“bud”. Floribots acts as an interactive collective
organism with ‘hive mind” characteristics. It is capable
of sensing audience movement and of adapting its
behaviours accordingly. It is a “field of flowers” that
dances in unison, with choreography provided by its
embedded microcontroller. The flower matrix can exhibit
complex wave propagation behaviours as well as describing
responsive surface features and entering periods of
chaotic motion. The Floribot mind is able to control
transitions between these states and can “learn” as it is
runs over time by acclimatising itself to an installation
site and developing a particular set of behaviour
preferences. Shortlisted National Sculpture Prize,
National Gallery of Australia 2005, Winner Peoples Choice
Award, National Sculpture Prize. Also exhibited at Perth
Institute of Contemporary Art 2007, and Singapore Art
Museum 2010.
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Counter
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2009, 325 x 325 x 120cm, Electronics,
Microprocessor, Electromechanical Digits, Acrylic Paint,
Hardboard
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Counter
was first installed near the entrance to the Perth
Underground Train Station in the Central Business District
of Perth, Australia. Since then it has counted on the beach
at Cottesloe, Western Australia, and will next appear at
Aarhus, in Denmark. The work is a temporary
installation originally commissioned by the City of Perth as
part of its "Transart" urban art initiative. Counter is an
interactive installation that literally counts each
pedestrian that walks though its archway. Counter is capable
of counting up to one less than a billion, after which it
will clock-over and go back to zero. The work is powered by
solar energy. The concept for Counter arises from various
notions, one of which is the imperative to “be counted” or
“make sure you count” that is part of our shared liberal
democratic cultural heritage. In addition, the work carries
overtones of surveillance and scientific measurement.
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Headspace
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2010, 150 x 150 x 80cm, Robotics,
Electronics, Minicomputer, Digital Face Scan Data, Polished
Aluminium
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Headspace is a matrix of 256 motorised
rods. Each rod is able to extrude some 400mm. It is an
interactive kinetic sculpture with four motion detectors
able to detect human presence. It is permanently installed
at Christ Church Grammar School, in Perth, Western
Australia, where it was commission to commemorated the 100th
year of the school. The system is loaded with 3D scan data
based on the faces of over 700 schoolchildren, the rod
matrix is able to assume these face-like forms as well as
morph between them and perform geometric transitions.
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Optobot
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2008, 100 x 230 cm, LEDs,
Electronics, Microprocessor, Stainless Steel, Printed
Vinyl
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Optobot is an interactive optical wall
panel incorporating four motion detectors and some 3,000 RGB
LED lights mounted behind two perforated machine-turned
stainless steel sheets. The LEDs shine light onto a printed,
coloured, tessellated pattern - the idea being to create
colour changes by additive and subtractive mixing of colour.
The system uses an embedded microcontroller to create
multiple, overlapping "waves in colourspace" that propagate
across the work then gradually diminish. Optobot uses a DMX
network to control 36 channels of colour mixed light.
Optobot is permanently installed at Automotive TAFE in
Kwinana, Western Australia.
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Clockwork Jayne
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2009, 200 x 80 x 80 cm, Clockwork
Mechanism, Electrical Components, Fibregless, Acrylic
Mirror, Auto Lacquer
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Clockwork Jayne is a life-sized
ballerina figure mounted on a faceted mirror base. When its
clockwork mechanism is wound up the ballerina pivots slowly
and a tune plays quietly until the spring winds down. The
work draws on childhood memories of my sisters' little
clockwork music boxes, with ballerinas that popped up and
rotated in front of a mirror when you open the lid.
Clockwork Jayne was exhibited at the Holmes a'Court Gallery
in Perth, Western Australia. Clockwork Jayne was produced
with assistance from the West Australian Ballet and its
principle dancer, Jayne Smeulders.
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The Coppelia Project
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2011 - Work in progress,
Robotics
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The Coppelia Project will lead to the
creation of a troupe of four robot ballerinas that will be
able to learn and perform dance movements and interact with
an audience. The Coppelia Project is inspired by the
story about a clockwork girl from the ballet "Coppelia" by
Delibes, written in 1868. The Coppelia Project is being
produced with assistance from the West Australian Ballet and
its principle dancer, Jayne Smeulders. Robotics specialist
Design Feats has assisted with custom developed
motor-control electronics for the project.
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Parallax
Dancer
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2011 - Work in progress, 3D Scans, 3D
Animation, Computer Hardware
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The Parallax Dancer project is
creating a virtual ballerina installation artwork based on a
synthesis of practices in ballet dance and choreography; 3D
digital scanning and animation; custom software development;
electronic systems integration; and machine vision. The
project is being developed with the assistance of 3D
scanning bureau headus metamorphosis.
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Autobot
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2008, Robotics, Electronics,
Microprocessor, Aluminium, Automotive Components
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Autobot is an interactive
ceiling-mounted robotic artwork incorporating four motion
detectors and 31 electric motors. The system uses an
embedded microcontroller to create waves and transformations
that propagate across the work then gradually diminish.
Autobot is permanently installed at Automotive TAFE in
Kwinana, Western Australia.
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Anemone
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2005, 350 x 200 x 200 cm Robotics,
Aluminium, Lycra
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Anemone is an interactive robotic
sculpture. Anemone means "wind flower", but anemones are
actually a marine animals.
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| Optic
Alley |
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2008, Dimensions Variable,
Lasers, Servo Motors, Microprocessor, Electronics
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Optic Alley is an interactive laser
installation consisting of sixteen pivoting green lasers
mounted along a twelve metre
stretch of narrow laneway. Optic Alley incorporates four
motion detectors and a computer control system so that
pedestrians approaching the installation trigger a
cascading sequences of laser deflections to create waves
that progress down the alleyway until they dissipate.
Optic Alley sets up the potential for a dance-like
performance to emerge, as pedestrians move and sway in
response to the lasers and Optic Alley responds in turn to
the movement of pedestrians. Optic Alley is the result of
a Research and Development grant from the Perth Institute
of Contemporary Art and Cultural Sponsorship from the City
of Perth
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Essentialiser
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2002/2003,
Lasers, Video Interactive Installation
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Essentialiser is an interactive appliance incorporating
60 small industrial red lasers, installed along three
axial mounts. Each laser produces a fan-beam that creates
a perfect plane of red light. The effect is that anything
or anyone inside Essentialiser is embedded in a matrix of
6,859 ten-centimetre wide cubes of red laser light inside
a two-and-a-half metre cubic enclosure. The enclosure is
darkened internally and screened from outside light.
Audience participants are able to pass through a door and
enter the space where the 60 beams trace lines onto their
bodies. The visible effect of the incident beams is picked
up via an infra-red video camera and displayed, on a
feedback monitor inside the Essentialiser, as well as on a
large outside monitor, for the gallery audience to see.
Collaboration with Rickie Kuhaupt. Essentialiser has been
exhibited at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art and
at Collaborative Concepts Gallery in Beacon, New York USA.
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Transfiction
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2005, 120m Wide Laser
Projection
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Transfiction uses a laser projection to
redefine the surface of a built object - Commonwealth Place, in
the Parliamentary Triangle, Canberra.
Transfiction’s departure point is a line-matrix or
‘wireframe’ representation of a flat surface. However,
rather than projecting only ‘true’ or straight laser
vectors onto the built surface, Transfiction uses
scanning laser technology to project distorted and altered
lines and webs. The work explores fictional
geometries, where the rules of solidity and
linearity are temporarily suspended. Located at the
symbolic heart of our nation, this work was commissioned
by the ACT Government as the entryway to 24:7 Public Art
Programme of 2005.
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Bubblesort
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2002, 170 x 80 x 50 cm,
Aluminium, Copper, Chromium, Auto Lacquer
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Bubblesort is a famous software sorting algorithm. This
sculpture actualises the virtual bubblesort construct and
credits it with agency and interactive potential.
Exhibited Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi and Cottesloe.
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LaserWrap
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2004,
Dimensions Variable, Laser Projection Installation
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LaserWrap is a permanently installed animated laser
sculpture that illuminates the ACT Health Building for
three hours each night. Twenty green lasers literally wrap
the building in a gently undulating matrix of light cubes.
LaserWrap has had a transformational impact on the quality
of the built environment in the nightlife precinct at the
heart of Canberra. A new and unexpected addition has been
made to the solid presence of a 1970s public building - in
the evening it comes to life, transformed like the pumpkin
before midnight into an otherworld vision. A functioning
building is transposed to a plastic, performing, chimera.
The artist's vision entailed embedding an existing built
object into an active laser sculpture. They wanted to take
the classic mathematical system of Cartesian 3-D
co-ordinates - consisting of x,y, and z axes - and use it
as a metaphor for a virtualising, postindustrial
worldview. They wanted to apply this metaphor on a massive
scale - the huge step-pyramid presence of the ACT Health
Building provided the prefect platform for this
experiment. Collaboration with Rickie Kuhaupt. This work
was an Exemplar, Year of the Built Environment, 2004.
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Torso
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2004, 185 x 120 x 40 cm,
Stainless Steel, Cast Marble
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Torso is a life-size human figure derived from a body
cast of one of the artists. The outer parts of Torso are
made from mirror-polished stainless steel, while the
central section is made from a resin-bonded composite that
consists of 75% powdered white marble. The effect of the
figure so rendered is that the trunk and extremities are
separated visually, while remaining physically contiguous.
The central torso makes reference to archaeological
remnants of heroic figures from Greek antiquity. The
marble used as the material for this part of the work also
plays to this classical reference. The outer parts of the
figure are encased in 'gloves' of reflective metal that
evoke the hi-tech / sci-fi 'chrome' signifier.
Collaboration with Rickie Kuhaupt. Finalist, Helen
Lempriere Sculpture Prize.
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Quadrascope
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2001, 230 x 110 x 110 cm, Plasma Displays, Computer Hardware
and Software
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Quadrascope is an omidirectional interface device that
displays a large-scale animated version of Chromeskin on
each side of a telephone box-sized rectangular prism. The
device displays images derived from the Chromeskin
laserscan data, processed against the current visual field
around it. Observers are able to walk up to and around
Quadrascope and approach its surfaces closely. On each
face a representation of mirror surfaced Chromeskin is
displayed, with the figure reflecting and reacting to the
movements of the viewer in realtime. The device is a kind
of 'fishtank' giving the impression of a chrome body
floating within a rectangular volume. The machine uses
four networked computers, four video cameras, and four
130cm plasma flat panel displays. Quadrascope is driven by
synchronised 3-D rendering software written especially for
the artists by headus (metamorphosis).
Quadrascope forms part of the Chromeskin project.
Quadrascope was created in collaboration with Richie
Kuhaupt. Finalist and Highly Commended Award, National
Sculpture Prize, National Gallery of Australia 2001.
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Emission
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2001, 120 x 140
x 100 cm, Cast and Fabricated Aluminium, Auto Lacquer
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Emission
is an exported cyberterritorian (item/being/process). Here
crystallised is the cyborg intermarriage of amorphous,
sticky, organic potentials, wetly embracing the rigour of
regularly expressed delineated systems. Emission is a
denizen of the digital realm that has been swept from its
native virtual context into the world of mundane tangibility
and deposited here on the shores of our reality. |
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Erasorhead
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Maria
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1997, 90 x 90 cm, Oil and
Auto Lacquer on Stainless Steel
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Maria was
the robot/girl heroine of the 1910 Fritz Lang film
masterpiece "Metropolis".
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2001, 185 x 120 x 40 cm,
Electroformed Copper, Chromium, Fibregless
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Chromeskin
is the result of a three year collaborative project between
Geoffrey Drake-Brockman and Richie Kuhaupt. Chromeskin was a
finalist in the 2001 inaugural National Sculpture Prize and
Exhibition, and was on exhibition at the National Gallery of
Australia in Canberra from November 30 2001 to March 10
2002. The work was awarded Highly Commended, by the National
Sculpture Prize judges. |
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Neural Network
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2003, 60 x 120
x 20 cm, Electroformed Copper, Chromium, Fibregless |
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Neural Network consists of 18 nodes, regularly
distributed over a mirror-reflective matrix-form. As the
viewer changes orientation the nodes appear to
intermittently make and break connections with adjacent
nodes. Chrome surface produced by electrofoming over
fibreglass. Winner, Princess Margaret Search for Genius
Award.
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Geoffrey
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2001,
Dimensions Variable, Acrylic Paint, Fibreglass Figure,
Laser
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The key process of the Geoffrey artwork is a single-point
ocular gridding of the installation space. An ideal
perceptual checkerboard that is suggestive of networked
and delineating technologies, as well as linear and
ordered mental systems. Of course, the act of observation
always influences the observed phenomena, but in the case
of Geoffrey a transient act of observation has been
crystallised as an observable system in itself.
In a sense, Geoffrey depicts a sensorium, an inner space
or Cartesian theatre where mental processes are played
out. In here, Geoffrey is both actor and audience, caught
in the cycle of his own awareness. Geoffrey: information
technologist, man-who-would-be-robot, logician. Under the
perfect ordering principle Geoffrey is rendered
monodimentional. Outside the system there are glimpses of
another Geoffrey: fat man, artist, person.
Geoffrey was created in collaboration with Richie
Kuhaupt.
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Pangenesis
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Jacobs Ladder
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2002,2000 |
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Pangenesis is a theory of inheritance where genetic
information is derived from all parts of an organism.
Pangenesis has been discredited in the organic context,
but may be a viable schema for reproduction of virtual
lifeforms. In this work a virtual being has just
reproduced via fission - producing three new offspring.
Under pangenesis each offspring has a complete genetic
record.
Jacobs Ladder is the ladder leading to heaven as seen by
Jacob in his dream; alternatively, it is a device for
generating a series of high voltage plasma arcs that
ascend between twin diverging conductors before
dissipating into the atmosphere.
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Lasercube
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2002,
Dimensions Variable, Lasers
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Lasercube is a programme exploring the application of
planar beams of laser light to describe surfaces, objects
and landscapes. The core Lasercube technology involves 60
industrial lasers with hemicylindrical lenses. These are
mounted on armatures arranged along the x, y, and z
spatial axes. The project encompasses the capture of laser
effects via video and still photography and the digital
manipulation and presentation of these images. The project
crosses boundaries between photography, dance, video,
performance, and installation artforms. Lasercube is a
collaboration between Drake-Brockman and Kuhaupt and, in
its dance/performance realisation, the Skadada performance
troupe.
Laser beams are coherent, absolute agents that will be
used in this project to introduce gridding and dividing
systems applied to realworld objects. This will be done in
order to conveniently reduce the object under
investigation to its bare spatial necessity. Lasercube is
a collaborative project with Richie Kuhaupt. One image
shown is of a performance piece (Lasercube II) developed
in collaboration with Skadada, dancers; Jon Burtt and Lucy
Taylor.
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Phasespace Tunneller
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1997 |
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Phasespace
is a mathematical abstraction - an infinite-dimensional
space in which each point fully specifies the total
spacetime of an alternate universe. Phasespace encompasses
all possible universes - by extrapolation, phasespace hints
at the potential embryonic in 'cyberspace'. |
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| Memebot
Cluster |
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1999 |
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A 'meme'
is an idea or behaviour that exhibits some 'lifelike'
characteristics as it is adopted by groups and individuals.
Memes may spread throughout populations osmotically, mutate,
flourish, or dissipate. They are generally independent of
individual 'carriers' and may be likened to (computer)
viruses that 'run' in a human consciousness 'virtual
machine'. 'Bot' is a contraction of 'robot' denoting a
software system with a degree of autonomy that undertakes a
particular task or manages a specific issue. A cluster is
generally a collection of like things, a 'bunch' - but in
systems terms is a closely interlinked group of processors
that effectively become a single aggregate machine - in some
ways 'greater than the sum of its parts'. |
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