Day 6

Drove down to Melbourne following a generous morning tea with the la Trobe Art staff. The road was blocked, so we took a detour though the back country. Beautiful gums twisting in strange shapes, grassland and waterholes, half empty from the drought. Autumn Rainstorms beat down , but the ground is so hard now it runs off and makes little difference. The air was full of cockatoo flocks and an emu was grazing in the distance.

This is a beautiful part of the country and a deeply different landscape to anything European, in spite of the reminicent place names such as Malmsbury. We passed Hanging rock in the distance. Melbourne is a vibrant and huge metropolis. I braved the excellent rapid transit system to visit my brother in law, who lives in Caulfield. This is a great base to visit the galleries and talk to curators.

Day 5

A day spent researching the past of Bendigo. Tracing Aboriginal history was illuminating.The area was settled by 16 different tribes of Jaara Jaara-the only references in Google were to youth crime, hepatitis C and alcholism. The usual fate of displaced peoples.

I checked the Australian online databases at La Trobe library-one relevant entry. Here is a past that has been completely excised. At the Bendigo history display next to the tourist office was a timeline . It starts with 40,000 years of continuous occupation being labelled as Dreamtime followed by a sucession of squatters and diggers, Chinese and Cornish miners and goldrush wealth wiping the slate clean.

Fascinating too to read about the white Australia policy, the negative depictions of the Chinese immigration and the taxes imposed on them on landing, which meant many landed outside the territory and walked the 200 miles to the diggings! The official racial policy only ended in 1961 and since than there has been integration of Asians etc, and the landrights movement. Clearly the scars and distortions of that history remain- with boat people processed on an island offshore and immigration camps in the desert.

It will be interesting to reflect these different voices in the piece, so the task now is to make contact with the various groups.

Day 4: Arrival

Finally arrived in Bendigo after 12 more hours of travel-we flew over sea of Flores and crossed jewelled archepelego and then the desert for several hours. All the way up to Bendigo on the train I read the local papers-there is one major political issue here and that is the drought. The world is changing and in terms of precious resources water will be the new gold-must be a theme here!

The studio annd flat are wonderful and there is everything one could need-so today is one of orientation. I met Donna and Pete who have adjacent studios. Donna's photographic work is stunning and documents life in the bush, using her family a la Sally Mann but without the sexualising gaze. It is frightening to see how a lush landscape has turned to dry mud and dust in just a few short years.

Day one

Arrived in Kuala Lumpar for a day’s stop over en route-after a 13 hour flight. The air hits you at 7.30 in the morning like a warm wall of heat, with a faint smell of kerosene and rotting vegetation. Appropriately the airport is cut from the jungle 40 miles out from KL and is fantastic in all senses. The hotel is a colonial array of verandahs and red corrugated tin roofs-but with aircon.

KL is reached by a smooth express in 35 minutes and I just have time to tour the old markets and China Town. There is a sense of happy chaos with the odd display of despair and neglect for those living on the streets. I then visited the Petronas towers. Some one tried to scale them last week and was stopped by security on the 60th Floor. They contained a massive shopping centre with every named brand on display. This is modern marketing red in tooth and nail and is enthusiastically endorsed by the Malays –who are beautifully thin and young.

Malaysia is obsessed with modernity. KL in particular is an odd mix of traditional Moslem architecture and uber-modern design. Even the old railway station is like an updated Ahlambra Palace. One has to remember how recent a history it has –original meaning is ‘muddy river estuary’ and was it carved out from the jungle by tin miners in the mid eighteen hundreds, The past is one of gang warfare and vice, cleaned up by colonial administrations and hit by waves of repressive governance and unhindered market capitalism.

It is not so different in this to Bendigo and a past of greed and rivalry that may be part of the final artwork I want to research during the residency.

Rotating

This is the first entry for a blog documenting a Research residency at La Trobe University Melbourne, exploring notions of active audience particpation in interactive projection environments. Notionally a year long Residency-it involves a five week physical residency at Bendigo in the heart of the Australian Goldfields. It is funded by Bath Spa University , particularly Artswork (a new centre of excellence for pedagogic research at Bath Spa University)

Curently in a spin preparing for the big trip-still struggling with pilot technology for a 360 degree rotating projector based on an automated camera head which can be programmed and controlled remotely. Technical development is by Cliff Randall of Bristol University Computing department, wearables laboratory and programmed by Anthony Head of Bath Spa University.


Residency proposal
Moving images – Hidden Histories

The exhibition is based on the concept of a moving projector, which tracks human presence through sensor technology and projects onto the walls of a space in synch with an audience member as they move within it. This technology is being developed in partnership with Cliff Randall of Bristol University Computing department, wearables laboratory.

I would hope to create hidden video scenes or vignettes based on my experiences of Place during the residency and their relation to the cultural history of Bendigo, which will be fleetingly revealed at different positions on the gallery walls triggered through the observer’s movement in the gallery space.

I would also wish to further research the possibility of installation in a gold mine and the funding of a larger project at a future date.

This builds on the concept behind my last few projects, which are documented on , where audience motion has triggered increasing degrees of intimacy (Understanding Echo) or moved the sound track from one screen to another (Triple Echo) or tracked the audience around a space, assigning a video character to an individual observer (Hosts).

My last commission for InVideo in Milan in November '06 was called Hidden Doors and was installed in a hotel room. The observer triggered video scenes through a virtual door which opens at random on moments from a couple’s time in the same room.

I will work informally with a small group of Visual Arts Honours students, sharing my skills and ideas during this project. I hope to collaborate in the filming and construction of the installation with the group during my residency.

I will also create regular blog documentation on my blogsite (www.mobileaudience.blogspot.com and www.roamedia.blogspot.com). This blog will give a venue and forum for work created during the residency. The blog will be updated regularly.

Finally, I am planning open studio work in progress sessions to discuss the ideas and technology behind the project. The public and media will all be invited to look and discuss the residency project and any work that is created.

Visual Support Material

Please visit: http://www.martinrieser.com