Dialogues With Landscapes - Terra(socio)sonica: A Crossover Project

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At 6pm on the 15th of February 2011 (West Australian Time), Dialogues With Landscapes will be launched, running through the 6th of March 2011 in conjunction with the Perth International Arts Festival, and under the auspices of the Cultural Precinct at UWA, led by Professor Ted Snell. This is to commemorate The University of Western Australia's centenary, with seven artists commissioned to create immersive real and virtual environments across the campus – incorporating sound, sculpture, installation and performance. Julian Stadon's (SL: Julez Rickenbacker) 'Terra(socio)sonica' waves the flag for virtual worlds with his creation that crosses the great divide between the physical and virtual realms.




Cultural Precinct Director and Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, Professor Ted Snell said, "Its an exciting blurring of the boundaries between real life and second life and it will engage audiences attending the Sommerville Auditorium in a second life experience that will rival their first world experience."

Alongside the RL experience, Jay Jay Jegathesan, Manager of the School of Physics, UWA will assist newcomers who register their interest to experience the Second Life portion if this artwork.

Synopsis of Terra(socio)sonica
Terra(socio)sonica explores the notion of unspoken ‘silent dialogues’ under a paradigm of social engagement, through individuals and large clusters of people producing amplified sounds and shadows, based on their oscillating movements within a defined social landscape.

This work uses real-time tracking technologies with a unique pipeline application to create a mixed reality soundscape, that is mediated through interactions between the viewer, the environment and other participants within a hypersurfaced mixed reality feedback loop. As visitors negotiate a traditional public environment: the entrance and surround to the Somerville Auditorium, data regarding their movements and interaction with others present is gathered and translated into sonic outputs, both in the physical and in the virtual. In the physical the output will be present via stereo speakers installed in the space and in the virtual, a three dimensional representation will shadow and echo sonic and visible traces of the real time dialogues that occur, into UWA's Second Life Environment.

The work is inspired by Deleuzian notions of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, with particular regards to second level cybernetic feedback systems (within the context of mixed reality social interaction). The work also investigates the relationship between traditional (postcolonial) socio-technic hierarchies, and those developing in current evolving cybercities. This is an attempt to explore Bernard Steigler's historicisation of technical objects and western philosophy in a way that embraces Deleuze's translation of Bergsonism, particularly regarding intuition as method.