Science

making BLUE MOON

My video poem BLUE MOON, has generated quite some interest in how it was made.

The underlying sequence of buildings panning along to a beachscape is actually a single still image that I built in Photoshop. It is constructed from about 100 images of buildings around the Adelaide CBD, North Haven, and Brighton. They were photographed on days with bright sunshine and clear blue skies so that the lighting was comparable across the shots. Even so, I needed to adjust colour, brightness, saturation, scale, perspective and so on to get the visual mix right. The blue skies also allowed for easier compositing later on. In the final mix, the background sky was processed to be the same in all assemblies and was derived from the average sky colour in the images. The final Photoshop file is huge: 62,000 x 1800 pixels and about 500 MB. It was assembled from 5 smaller montages, each of which was from a specific location, and each of which contained dozens of layers.

I then took the final composite image into Final Cut Pro X and animated the pan from one end to the other. To save memory, I rendered it, and used the … Click here for more.

Dial Tone awarded 3rd place in Health Poetry Prize

My poem Dial Tone came third in the University of Canberra 2017 Health Poetry Prize! Congrats to winner Joe Dolce and runner-up, Vanessa Procter.

“The University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize aims to inspire others through poetry to consider the journey to live life well. The poem may be focussed on mental or physical health, and can investigate what ‘living life well’ means. This may include barriers to living a well life, promoting a life lived well, or describe the experience of, or transition to, living life well.“

The prize-winning and short-listed poems will be published by the University. Meanwhile, here is an excerpt from Dial Tone:

Redial 1

The message mentioned belongings. I comply, search afterglow
for jasmine, rose, orange blossom, hands fallow at my sides,
on tabletop, in rarely hostile earth. “Good to have you back.”
But I cannot be sure. Our arrival is delayed by asymptote, slowed
by imperfection. Bloodshot meanders skirt lawns to be mown,
drains to clear, vermin to evict. Amid cartons and packing crates,
window shades jealous our skin, discontent curtains our perspective.
We substitute bluff with categoric denial, switch to silent mode.

Click here to see more about the … Click here for more.

Body of Evidence

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Body of Evidence was a multi-medium exhibition inspired by the impact of Art on Health held at the Adelaide Convention Centre 30 May – 1 July, 2016 featuring John Blines, Gina Czarnecki & The Australian Dance Theatre, Meg Cowell, Ian Gibbins, Naomi Hunter, Cheryl Hutchens, Hans Kreiner, Kerryn Levy, Deborah Prior, Damien Shen, Angela Valamanesh & Thomas Yeend. Curated by Carollyn Kavanagh.

I contributed an installation piece called Syntaxin: Kiss and Run, and two videos called Situs Inversus, one for an internal LED screen (which you can see here, with audio), and one, a special projection project (watch it here), on a huge window of the SW corner of the Convention Centre, along with one by Meg Cowell. 

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Body of Evidence

BOE Exhibition Card FINAL 1

Body of Evidence is a multi-medium exhibition inspired by the impact of Art on Health held at the Adelaide Convention Centre 30 May – 1 July, 2016 featuring John Blines, Gina Czarnecki & The Australian Dance Theatre, Meg Cowell, Ian Gibbins, Naomi Hunter, Cheryl Hutchens, Hans Kreiner, Kerryn Levy, Deborah Prior, Damien Shen, Angela Valamanesh & Thomas Yeend. Curated by Carollyn Kavanagh.

I contributed an installation piece and two videos, one for an internal LED screen running through the exhibition, and one, a special projection project, on a huge window of the SW corner of the Convention Centre, along with one by Meg Cowell, during the nights of 22-25 June 2016.

Syntaxin: Kiss and Run

2016. Timber, steel, brass, glass, digital prints, magnetic-optical disks, magnetic tape, plate glass, found objects. Dimensions: 182cm W x 41cm D x 165cm H (approx).

‘Syntaxin’ is a protein with a vital role in the molecular mechanism, called ‘Kiss and Run’, that controls the release of chemical messengers from the ends of nerve cells (synapses). The relevant structures can only be seen by specialised microscopes. This work uses Ian’s own electron microscope images of synapses, obsolete data storage devices containing those images, and found objects to … Click here for more.

“Chandelier” installed at Flinders Uni Student Hub

The Chandelier is one of the works I did with Deb Jones and Catherine Truman for the Microscope Project in 2014. It was acquired by Flinders University and installed above the main stairwell at the entrance to their new Student Hub. Here is an excellent little video that Flinders made about the installation.

A conversation with Garry Stewart

The following is an extensive email conversation, which happened over a period of time between Garry Stewart and Ian Gibbins during the preparation of ‘Proximity‘. It will give you an idea of the depth of research that Garry delves into for his work on any particular subject. It really shows that contemporary dance can be the thinking person’s art form as well as satisfying the draw of physical expression and virtuosity. 

Q. I’m wondering if you could say that ‘when we see we do it with our entire body, not just our eyes and brain’.

A. I think the purists would not like to say “see” but certainly “perceive” would be well accepted. There is no doubt that how we visually perceive the world around us is influenced by our prior knowledge and / or expectations of the things we see. In terms of the “entire body”, something that is so intrinsic to us it is generally taken for granted, is that we perceive the world and its objects necessarily adjusted for our body scale: how big we are compared to everything else. This determines how we interact with things at various distances from us, how we judge … Click here for more.