Millions in the sky

We are in the digital and information age. Information – images, photos, databases, maps, spatio-temporal data and GPS data is at our fingertips on the very phones in our pockets, and often fed to us ‘live’. Such open data is provided by governments to ‘be freely accessible, to be used, modelled, shared by anyone for any purpose without restrictions.’

We can track planes, trains and automobiles, ferries, and buses – and the people in them.
This access provides many benefits but raises problems of privacy, misuse, safety, surveillance, cyber stalking and terrorism.

We aimed to create artwork from open data and to reflect the abundance of data. Airport traffic data was chosen after learning of the staggering statistic of there being a million people in the air at any one time around the world. The negative environmental impact of air travel weighed heavily on our minds.

The work uses data from Brisbane and other major airports around the world and represents the sheer number of flights, and the activities and intrigue of the aviation world along with its symbols, signs, code and imagery.

Flight tracking data encompases airports, airlines, plane model, registration and times of flight departures and arrivals. Data on million flights was captured and stored in a custom database, from which this temporal artwork was created.

In Progress…

A Prototype of Lottery of life https://vimeo.com/856777114

A temporal exploration of luck, and chance in life. Graphic elements are akin to people; born at a certain place and time, have interactions with others, exert influence or are changed by the influence of others or events, and then are no longer. The language of chance is explored in the work to highlight how we consider the amount of control we actually have in our lives.

subdivision series -work in progress

In this series, we investigate the geometric division of the canvas and the influence and juxtaposition of line and colour. We tighten control on the composition of our abstract works by introducing control through topology. Some works in progress are below.

Subdivision – work in progress

Subdivision – work in progress

Subdivision – work in progress

 

Icons of Australian Sport Series

A digital interactive and print based series developed from photographic portraits celebrating athletic endeavour, exploring the media, sport and contemporary culture.

Susie O’Neill AM , Icon of Australian Sport, 2018

Edition of 2

C-Type photographic print

76 x 101 cm

Brisbane resident, Olympic champion, sporting icon, ambassador, charity fundraiser, and media personality.  Enlarged colourful pixels comprising O’Neill’s portrait simulate a digitally transmitted image. This conveys the power of news media and telecommunication technology to create celebrities including Madame Butterfly.  Pressures of powerful social media exchange, public reverence and scrutiny are contemplated.

Detail not to scale

 

Landscapes of Luck Series

Landscapes of Luck are a series of imaginary landscapes painted using an interactive computer model based on chance.  The roll of a virtual die dictates mark making instructions to evolve each landscape. Instructions are iteratively modified according to artistic preference. Technology and chance  allow us to extend the bounds of our creativity to discover, refine and delight in unimagined landscapes. The Landscapes of Luck series is influenced by the group members professional backgrounds in geographical sciences and information technology.

 

Landscape of Luck X, C-Type photographic print, 41 x 59cm

Landscape of Luck III, C-Type photographic print, 59 x 41cm

Landscape of Luck VII, C-Type photographic print, 40 x 28cm

Constructive Series

Reconstruction After Balson 1947, 2018

‘Reconstruction after Balson’ is an act of creating infinite re-constructions of Australian modernist painter Ralph Balson’s, ‘Constructive Painting’ (1947), currently held by the Queensland Art Gallery.

The use of digital technology as the medium highlights the constructive nature of the work and allows infinite variations of Balson’s composition to be explored.

The work experiments with effects of variations in colour and opacity.  Overlapping   geometries greatly heighten the illusion of depth in the work.

Below is a  video of 5 re-constructions in the infinite series. Designed to be viewed in real time on a computer monitor, each reconstruction is unique, and are not pre-made animations.

The fact that the work causes rise to discussion of various contentious issues about art is not lost on the artists.

15, 031 art works were created over the first exhibition period and were available for sale. Four are below.

Installation view of ‘Reconstruction After Balson, 1947’, 2018.

Video of ‘Reconstruction after Balson, 1947’, 2018

Reconstruction after Audette’s Spatial Relations, 2018

This is the first work in the series re-imagining Australian artist Yvonne Audette’s abstract painting, Spatial Relations, 1947.

Other constructive works

White on Black on White on Black, 2018. Giclee print 75 x 75 cm

The Soirée, 2019. C-Type photographic print 51 x 38 cm

 

Colourscape 7, Constructive Series, 2018. C-Type photographic print 15cm x 33cm

Section from Untitled (Abstract Colours 5), Constructive Series, 2017

Blue 2, Constructive Series, 2017

Colourscape 10, Constructive Series, 2018

Colour Weaving 3, Constructive Series, 2018

 

Other Works

Journey Through Red, 2018

Explorations of digital colour space and colour perception.
This 1 minute long video depicts one unique venture on the journey. Records of the journey akin to a travel diary are captured.

Journey Through Red, 2018

Journey Through Red: Records I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII, 2018

Mosaic of Colours II, 2018