Author: Matt Leaf

Writing.

Abstract:

Æon presents an abstract interpretation of the so-called ‘orbital perspective’, the view from low-earth orbit and satellites such as the International Space Station. Like previous outer-space images of our planet such as Earthrise (1968), the Blue Marble (1972) and the Pale Blue Dot (1990), Æon considers recent images and 4K video produced aboard the ISS as belonging to the same lineage of images and historical discussion.

A contemplative movement through orbital perspective and polygonal space-time, Æon’s abstract crafts and geometries encircle and intersect with wireframe computational spherics, as body and shape locked in infinite, gravitational spin.

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Adaptable across installation and performance, Æon has been presented in various versions at Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, and Horse Bazaar, Melbourne, Australia.

Æon was produced with the support of Monash University from 2014-2016, and Banff Centre for the Arts during the Convergence Residency, of 2016,

Documentation

PROGRAMS was a vehicle for audio-visual performance incorporating sound with live and adaptive video/software content. Moving on from Sinuso Dial’s video-based performances, Programs incorporates real-time software content and audio-reactive visuals.

Abstract:

Humankind’s landing on the moon opened up a new consciousness for humans: for the first time we saw our planet as a whole, rather than a collection of divided countries and continents.

Similarly, a new perception of ourselves has emerged with the proliferation of high quality satellite imagery, such as those provided by Google Earth. We now have access to the collective Space Eye, and possess the ability to zoom and focus at any one scale of the fractal.

NASA provides super-high quality images for free, open-source download, and this presents a whole new palette of imagery to artists at unprecedented resolution, for the very first time. Like cracked walls, these images bear striking resemblance to painterly abstraction, yet have the effect of evoking awe at the beauty of our very own home.

Set to an original ambient score, Airfield presents these self-similar images as if flying from a plane, viewed from the planet’s own orbital eyes turned inward in a drifting, topological gaze.

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Airfield has screened at the 2010 Gertrude Street Projection Festival, Melbourne.

Updated for HD and exhibited as part of ‘Constructed Landscapes’, 2012, at Screen Space, Melbourne.

Divisible further into itself, the cinematic frame is easily subject to the cut and splice and repetition of line, as much as a sound artist cuts a sound beyond a waveform.

INTERLACE splices together 36 different films, combined to become an interlace of science fiction cinema. This documentation is an excerpt of the first 8 minutes of the full timeline.

Originally aiming to work with 108 films, splicing 1 across 10 pixels each for a 1080 master, the piece was resolved to 36 films, balanced somewhere between being at times indecipherable, but also recognizable in other moments.

INTERLACE, then, comes to be a kind of scramble. An interference, or horizontal concertina of film. It’s a play on the frame, a sandwiching of content into a ‘simultaneous cinema’.

Like the streams of content ever-flowing through RSS readers, web 2.0 feeds, or Bit Torrent channels, INTERLACE suggests a new hybrid form of multi-channel input, more often familiar to the digitally native non-linear sapien.

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Films used:
2001: A Space Odyssey – 2046 – Akira – Alien – Alien3 – Alien Resurrection – Aliens – Avatar – Children of Men – Coboy Bebop – Cypher – ET – Equilibrium – Event Horizon – eXistenZ – Fantastic Planet – Flight of the Navigator – Futureworld – Galaxy Quest – Ghost in the Shell – Logans Run – The Matrix – Predator – Predators – RoboCop – Star Wars – Surrogates – Terminator 2 – The Last Starfighter – The Lawnmower Man – The Running Man – The Andromeda Strain – THX 1138 – Total Recall – Tron Legacy

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Debut @
BYOB Melbourne, Tristian Koenig Gallery, South Yarra
December 16th 2011, 7 – 11pm

Mute City Dreemz, 2010

Video Artwork / Installation

Abstract:

The Paleolithic used the cave painting ceremonially to visualize the hunt – to either worship or call upon the Bison for its blessings to be used for food, tools, clothing, etc.

Today, we do not use these methods – I do not visualize a supermarket or retail department store through art in order to bring food, clothing, goods etc.

Our visions are of a different kind – a ‘better’ future world, dreams of a techno-future, collective aspirations for a phosphorescent urbanization, neon-nature, crystal castles…

MUTE CITY DREEMZ is a dream and a memory, where 16-bit Nintendo meets floating geometries in a slow, hazy vision of a future gone totally electric.

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MUTE CITY DREEMZ debuted at the CELLULOID CAVE exhibition, Blindside Gallery Melbourne, Australia, from 17th – 20th of November, 2010.

Also shown as part of BYOB Utrecht, via Setup Media Lab Utrecht, Netherlands, 19th May, 2011.

View Blindside Catalogue

Abstract:

There is an impossibility present for us in travelling the great distance of interstellar space: our nearest neighbouring star, Alpha Centauri, would take a gargantuan 180,000 earth years to reach with current technology.

Yet along with other significant scientific developments, such as spacecraft, it has been the camera which has provided the modern simian with the most acute and descriptive way of sympathising with the cosmic void, and of understanding our place within it.

Long before humans make any significant advancement in the physical traversal of worlds, it will be the continual development of optics – the ability to see closer, further and with finer detail – that we come to know the existence of extraterrestrial life by telescope alone.

As sharp as the current Google Earth renderings of our home planet, we may one day zoom to other worlds with the same scale, resolution and quality.

NOUMINA presents our current visual rendering of the Universe via high-quality satellite imagery from NASA, and video improvisations from the open-source planetarium software Stellarium.

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NOUMINA was exhibited as part of the Semantic Clutter event and Liquid Architecture 11 Festival, at West Space Gallery from the 13th – 16th of July, 2010.

NOUMINA has also screened in a linear format at the inaugural 2010 CINESONIKA Film Festival, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Screening / Install of NOUMINA at Design Festa Gallery, Harajuku, Tokyo, 16 – 19th July, 2011.

2012 Screening of NOUMINA as part of Austhetic, on the Federation Square Big Screen.

NOUMINA Credits:
Additional Audio Processing: Ry David Bradley
Consultant – Observational Astronomy: Michael Fitzgerald
Translation Assistants: Zane Lynd & Tomoko Yamaguchi
Installation Technician: Jonathan Hopkins