| 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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