Pre-workshop gallery activation: the ‘Hexa-Decimal’ project installed in the City Library Gallery.

Conducted by Public Assembly with young participants as part of Melbourne City Library and SIGNAL Youth Week program, April 2011. The Provocative Assemblage project was a sequence of workshops making small artworks from redundant books from the City Library collection.

The act of destroying a book in the past has been a provocative way of revealing the deeper structure of our collective knowledge / memory systems. This project explored the way library collections are curated. As their content ebb and flow over time, the books that are discarded can provide an interesting way to read the library as a whole as well as reflecting the demands and interests of the communities that they serve.

Prior to the Provocative Assemblage workshop, the ‘Hexa-Decimal’ project sought to establish a dialogue between the main library and the gallery. Ten volumes of a discarded Encyclopaedia Britannica were installed as a continuous horizontal line on the gallery wall. The installation refered to the ever changing horizon of knowledge, constantly re written perpetually incomplete.

The hexagonal forms punched from the Encyclopaedia Britannica were made into wearables and given to the City Library staff.

Each volume was perforated via a series of hexagons, revealing the contents within. The resultant hexagon sheets were applied to the gallery walls and made into wearables during the workshop program with invited participants. The hexagon can be viewed as a cube end on alluding to the 10×10x10 structure of the Dewey Decimal System (ten main classes, each of which are divided into ten secondary classes or subcategories, each of which contain ten subdivisions) but in a more poetic sense it is an expression of the ever expanding hive like quality of information storage.

The workshop began with a provocative act of slicing a discarded book with a large guillotine and reinserting them back onto the library shelves. This was intended to enact a metaphor to make visible the effect book weeding has on the library collection. Inspired by Joseph Beuys who sought to heal complex systems through artist interventions based on the concept of homeopatht, the intention of  this intervention was to ‘quickly peel off the band-aid’ so to speak and set in motion discussions around the universal transition to digital media.

Over two weeks, the City Library Gallery was transformed into a workshop space – inviting participants to transform discarded books into artworks.

‘Provocative Assemblage’ transformed the gallery into a workshop – creating a place for play and experimentation with redundant books from the City Library collection.  The resultant artworks were action based – creatively directed toward the central question of how information is ordered in the Dewey Decimal System and the relation of this to the deep structure of society.

As part of a final exhibition, these works were reinserted back into the library as a way to question knowledge systemisation. The gallery acted as a catalogue for the works placed within the City Library collection shelves, where visitors were invited to seek them out via their Dewey Decimal call number or by chance and thereby engaging with the library in a new way.

Great to see your project in action today. What a hive of activity and production. Very peculiar instruments and devices – the evidence of mad inventors at work. I loved the energy there in the space being overtaken by a guild of makers. I feel inspired by the connection of response of each work and their sensitivity towards the each book – “book becomes art object” – that in itself provides a wonderful synergy and reflection. And the seek and find aspect to the project that considers the integration of each work created, by reinserting them back into a relevant space within the library collection. This conjures a relevant context for the memory of their absence and also the rebirthing of the books. Laine Hogerty, Artist.

Thanks to Fiona Hillary from Signal. Leonee Derr; Jeanette Becklar and Ashley Higgs from Melbourne City Library.

Wagga Amateur Radio club member John Eyles loading up a morse code message.

Rolling Stock was a series of site specific performances, installations and collaborations between artists, visiting audiences and the local Junee community on a train moving through unconventional spaces. Curated by Sarah Last of the Wired Lab, Public Assembly was invited to create a site specific and participatory sound installation as part of the Rolling Stock program.

Having the last word project began with an investigation into the way colonial technologies of rail and subsequently telegraph had cut across existing indigenous song lines in the landscape. During this investigation, I soon discovered how important these three lines of communication have been to enable a sense of community in the vast expanse of Australia.

Morse was the first form of radio communication and amateur radio is still the last defense in the time of emergency – like amateur radio operator Bob Hooper establishing communications back to Darwin after Cyclone Tracy when all else had failed. The use of morse code as a communication platform now sits on the edge of living memory – the skill of being a morse operator almost a dying art. Analogue radio communications is now faced with a similar fate – as it is fazed out with the introduction of digital radio.

Having the Last Word was also inspired by my fathers tales of being a ’sparks’ radio operator, VK2ZJ – his life spanning the trajectory of radio communications – from morse to digital. As the Rolling Stock amateur radio project developed, a correspondence developed between us discussing trains, telegraphy and his experience in radio.  During this time a medical condition brought a great sense of urgency to our discussions in a way that lead me to consider the emotional gravity that last words have and what they might be to such a significant figure in my life.

For the Rolling Stock event, this idea was expanded upon and developed into a project  that could provide the experience of sharing the intimacy of your last words – inscribed by visiting audiences and encoded into the fading language of emergency by local Wagga amateur radio club morse operators.  Using one of eight sampling megaphones, we invited participants to load-up their message in the abstract form of morse code and join the emergent rhythm of the remaining booths of our 1936 FS train carriage.

Project collaborators: John Eyles, Mike McDonnell, Joergen (Yurn) Olesen-Jensen, Alan Wheaton and John Gerhard from the Wagga Amateur Radio club.

For more detailed photographs go to the Public Assembly flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/publicassembly/sets

Sound producer Dr Lisa Anderson interviewing participants.

Vox Populi: Climate of Opinion uses the communal qualities of radio to thread the gathering clouds of public opinion with a silver lining…

Building on the idea of a civic square as a space and forum for public debate, the Vox Populi: Climate of Opinon project created a temporary social platform for people to discuss their ideas, hopes and fears about the future as part of the Arena public art program for the inaugural Seven Thousand Oaks Festival.

Music, soundscapes poetry, vox pops and interviews were broadcast over the airwaves each Saturday during the four week festival. Audio pieces on the theme of the future and sustainability were put together by a range of sound producers and radio presenters and broadcast through a temporary radio station within one of Melbourne City Council’s ‘Creative Spaces’ Pylons at Melbourne City Square.

Listening in to broadcast ‘radio stems’ an aural field of sounds and opinions about the future.

Just as the wireless radio was once an opportunity for families to gather, Vox Populi asked passers-by to listen to and join a range of voices which were broadcast and heard within a field of radio stems on the grassy areas of City Square. Over the four week project, the radio stems grew in number – reflecting the number of voices engaged, broadcast and recorded to create an aural document of a new and unique climate of opinion.

The broadcast program included contributions from: Tessa Elieff;  Roger Taylor; Melissa Delaney;  John Jacobs; Jane Curtis and Lisa Anderson.

Exhibition / Platform Gallery. Degraves Street Subway / Launch: October 2 2009 / Season of Interventions: October 16-18 2009

The project works on a range of scales – from the broad context of mapping, to the interpretation of the city within the subterranean display cabinets at Platform Gallery to A5 sized self-published zines, to the 1:1 emersive and experiential interventions within the city fabric itself.

EXHIBITION: Each cabinet within Platform acted as a ‘deposit box’ of ideas which changed over the month long exhibition– representing a wide range of temporal practices which sat beyond the gallery, exploring creative urban opportunism and social engagement as well as a shift in scales from the intimate wearable to the sound walk.

INTERVENTIONS: The exhibition was the basis of a three day season of temporal events where each artist produced a single or series of creative responses in-situ . In this way, extending the exhibition beyond its subterranean location to become a map and guide to potential creative scenarios for the city above.

PUBLICATION | ZINE: As part of the exhibition, a suite of ten self-published zines were collaboratively produced with each artist. These became the residual documentation of ‘The Interventionist Guide to Melbourne’ – which could be used, acted upon and added to either during or after the project.

“The Interventionist Guide to Melbourne is a city-wide project curated by Lynda Roberts of Public Assembly. Described as an interactive artistic wake-up call to confront all that is predictable and boring in our streets, it will include projections, lightjacking, performances and a temporary customisation of the city way-finder signs.”

Penny Modra. Be Guided. The Age. Wednesday October 14, 2009

Download here:

‘Interventionist Guide to Melbourne’. Landscape Architecture Australia.

No/126.  May 2010. Article by Dan Nunan.

GOWANBRAE SURVEY | INSTALLATION  FOR COMMUNITY CONSULTATION | MORELAND CITY COUNCIL | 2010

A project about sharing views, vision and local perspectives, Gowanbrae Survey was a site specific and participatory art installation developed for Moreland City Council. As part of the community consultation process for a permanent public artwork for the Gowanbrae Community Centre and park, the key objective was to encourage local connection to the project and to provide opportunities to gather stories that might influence the development of the brief which could be carried forward through the life of the project.

As a relatively recent housing subdivision within Moreland, Gowanbrae is a physically and socially secluded suburb, yet visually connected to a broader context due to its steep typography providing views to Moonee Ponds Creek, local railway bridge and Melbourne CBD.

Gowanbrae Survey proposed to draw on these existing conditions and develop a series of telescopes or viewing devices that could act as creative platforms to prompt discussion with and about the Gowanbrae community: seeing in / out / within…

Placed in strategic locations during the one day community event and used as part of a walking procession through the site, these viewing devices ranged from professional surveying equipment (working with the language of subdivision / construction prevalent in the local area) to custom viewing devices assembled from a range of found objects – from mirrors, lenses and tripods to familiar domestic items.

While some viewing devices were designed for the individual to view through, others were developed for groups. Sight-lines ranged from the reflection of viewer’s eye to magnified views of other participants to views to neighbors and the surrounding suburban landscape beyond.

Feedback and ideas were captured via a paper ‘survey’ facilitated by Public Assembly and Cultural Value who had commissioned the project on behalf of Moreland City Council.

Week One: Relationscapes shopfront / studio. Melbourne Central.

Relation-scapes: Spaces of Encounter, Emotion and Exchange. A teaching collaboration with Caroline Vains.

Building on the Interventionist Guide to Melbourne project, this interior design studio examined the relational and emotional context of Melbourne Central Shopping Centre with the intention of designing, constructing and testing a series of tactical interventions on site and at 1:1 scale.

As part of the broader Department of Counter Culture project, the Relation-scapes studio occupied a vacant shop within Melbourne Central for the duration of the semester. This space was transformed into a workshop, observatory, incubator, laboratory, platform and studio headquarters – extending our design experiments out into the mall when required.

Students began by investigating how we encounter other people, places and things in this highly instrumental and surveilled retail environment and then designed, performed and constructed interventions with a view to enabling face-to-face encounters and exchanges of a different sort – exchanges that were relational, emotional and empathic. With the exception of the final project, all designs were built, occupied and tested at full scale in the shopping centre itself with remarkable outcomes.

MEDIUM PICNIC: using the shopping bag as a medium. Picnic blanket; Oxygen bag: Jessica Wood & Emily Parker; Immersive projection: Danah Gochman

PROJECT ONE

• Students in groups of three or four observed, documented, revealed and represented the relational and emotional context and politics of Melbourne Central. This was presented as part of a one-night exhibition: Medium Picnic at  Open Space Gallery, Melbourne

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Connector garment: Lingas Tran, Ainslie Herbert and Phoebe Baker-Gabb. Escalator [re]Action: Danah Gochman, Krystal Rawnson and Sarah Rowley

PROJECT ONE | filters: relational politics

• The second part of this project entailed the same group to design, construct, perform and document a small scale intervention based on their initial site analysis.

Quick Sew: Lingas Tran, Ainslie Herbert and Phoebe Baker-Gabb. Swap Shop: Stephanie Chan.

PROJECT TWO | tactics: emotional tactics

• Students were asked to design, construct and perform or occupy a medium scale tactical intervention in the mall that enabled a face-to-face emotional encounter or exchange.  Mothers Day was factored in as a seasonal retail promotion occurring in the mall during the project.

PROJECT THREE | tactics: emotional tactics

• As the final studio project, individual students were asked to present a hypothetical proposal for a relational environment to be sited somewhere specific in Melbourne Central.

Counter Point  | 2010 State of Design. Ticket Reallocation Society: Jessica Wood. Quick Sew: Lingas Tran, Ainslie Herbert and Phoebe Baker-Gabb

RELATION-SCAPES: COUNTER POINT EXHIBITION | 2010 STATE OF DESIGN

As part of the 2010 State of Design Festival, Counter Point was the public culmination of workshops and studios undertaken within Melbourne Central by the Department of Counter Culture. Located within Lonsdale Street pedestrian walkway, Relation-scapes presented a curated selection of student outcomes that exemplified face-to-face exchange that were relational and empathic rather than commodified.

Student Participants: Phoebe Baker-Gabb, Yi Ding, Danah Gochman, Ainslie Herbert, Yi Lin Miao, Emily Parker, Krystal Rawnson, Sarah Rowley, Ping Tiang, Lingas Tran, Jessica Wood, Dom Bunnag, Stephanie Chan, Kerr He, Michelle Lim, Jenny Nguyen, Rahul Pereira

Thanks to: Steven Borin, Carolyn Hughes, Georgina Tulloch, Tess OConnell and Emily Pedersen from GPT | Melbourne Central for making this project possible and for their ongoing support.

For more detailed information go to the Department of Counter Culture website:

http://www.counterculture.net.au/

* Relation-scapes is taken from Erin Manning’s new publication

Images from the Ephemeral Studio workshops with facilitator Neil Thomas and students in action…

Image: Spooky Mens Choir with sound artist Dan Conway

The Feedback ‘Sound Chamber’ was an immersive, resonating environment created for sound artists to develop and perform site specific works. The installation drew on the chamber’s past as an armament store and it’s contemporary usage as a festival site – and relating it back to a broader social and contemporary context – the war in Iraq,which was underway during the time of the festival.

Six Hundred Thousand Acres / Stop animation projection & sound installation

The interconnected chambers carved into the rock of Georges Heights Battery B42, Middle Head, resonate like a giant sandstone sea-shell, keeping an ear to the whisperings of the Harbour: the rumbling of a ferry; the drone of a passing plane; even the buzzing of insects are rendered in unusual ways by the chambers acoustics.

The now empty spaces fill the imagination of visitors that wander the subterranean passages and ponder their military past as part of this temporal one day installation as part of the Harbor Trust ‘ Art in the Open’ program.

CHAMBER ONE