Splendour Arts
It is often said that the unexpectedly memorable moments, the images that stay with SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS audiences, are the arts and interactive experiences that they stumble across onsite. 2011 will be no exception…
SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS is proud to present the 2011 Arts Program, showcasing artists from Australia and abroad.
The 2011 Splendour Arts Program will present a diverse collection of works including interactive digital media projection, street art and sculpture, performance and monumental installations.
Two of the major pieces included in this year’s Splendour Arts Program, Curious Creatures by jimmy Mcgilchrist and Close Encounters by Jordana Maisie , have been produced as part of SPLENDID. Splendid is a partnership between Lismore Regional Gallery, Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA), the Australia Council for the Arts and Splendour in the Grass to develop artistic talent and to offer festival audiences new creative experiences.
Splendid includes a residential Arts Lab, mentorship and commissioning of new artworks to be presented at Splendour in the Grass and then toured to major festival audiences in Australia and internationally.
Splendid has been designed as a platform for artists to generate new ideas and is an exceptional opportunity to develop their conceptual and production skills and connect with leading practitioners and presenters.
Visit the SPLENDID tent at the festival for more info.
Best Time Ever
2010 SPLENDID PROJECT
Artists
Lauren Brincat +
Dominic Finlay-Jones (Architect)
Media
Timber + Steel
Dimensions
23m Long, 14m High
Description
At it's simplest, Best Time Ever is a sculpture, a 23m long timber and steel staircase. A Stairway to Heaven.
Best Time Ever is also one of the largest sundials in the world, the rake of the stair mirroring exactly the latitude of the hill on which it is placed, the tip pointing due south.
A festival clock, literally the Best TIme Ever.
Close Encounters
2011 SPLENDID PROJECT
Artist: Jordana Maisie
Media: Steel, Aluminium, Mirror Polystyrene, Lights, Scrolling LED Marquees, Laptop, Custom Software.
Dimensions: 650cm x 477cm x 650cm
An unidentified object hovers above the festival transmitting messages to the undulating crowd …
Relative Urls:
http://www.splendid.org.au
http://jordanamaisie.com/
http://www.jumpmentoring.com.au/
http://jordanajump.tumblr.com/
Description:
"Close Encounters has been conceived to bridge the gap between the way art and music are experienced within Australian festival culture, bringing non-art specific communities together through their participation and interaction with the installation." - Jordana Maisie
The project is a large-scale (6.5m diameter) interactive sculpture, which takes the form of an unidentified flying object (UFO). The curved polystyrene mirror surface reflects the world around it. The dramatic horizon; lined with trees, the sky and its uninterrupted vastness, as well as the visitors themselves, who love to pick their images out of the reflected crowd as they move under the sculpture.
Close Encounters provokes audience participation through the use of wireless text messaging technology. The audience is invited to text the phone number displayed on the LED marquee (embedded into the circumference of the spaceship), and respond to the "alien's" text based provocations. By responding, the audience enters a dialogue with the anonymous "alien" on the other end of the line. Co-creating a real time narrative as their conversation unfolds.
Raised 2.9 meters off the ground, from a distance it appears as if a luminous UFO is hovering above the undulating audience, transmitting messages to the crowd as they move through the festival. When walking underneath it, Close Encounters acts as a portal connecting you to the sky and the surrounding natural environment. At night, a shaft of light beats down on the ground as if the aliens are preparing to beam someone up into the craft and take off.
This project wouldn't be possible without the support of my team, structural designer Andy McDonell and structural engineer Jeremy Sparks, as well as project partners the Jump Mentoring Program and LED Signs.
"I feel extraordinarily lucky to have been given this commission opportunity. It will enable me to create a new, large-scale, site-specific installation that will feed and respond to the already otherworldly experience of Splendour in the Grass. No doubt the Splendid journey will continue being a challenging but rewarding one and I can't wait to get back into the next phase." - Jordana Maisie
This works has been made possible through the generous support of
Cream
CREAM
Spreading the work of Buff Diss, Oliver of the Sky & Fernando Llanos over Splendour 2011 Curated by Annemarie Kohn
Oliver Of The Sky
Oliver Of The Sky’s cardboard waste sculptures, replicating oversized urban artifacts usually native to city streets, will be built on location at Woodford and clustered throughout the festival environment.
Buff Diss
Buff Diss creates free-hand illustrations with masking tape that transform outdoor spaces into sanctuaries of graphic expression. Drawing from elements of graffiti culture, his work intersects with public environments through boldly positioned line markings.
Fernando Llanos
Mexican video artist Fernando Llanos carries his projection equipment on his back, his bike or his skateboard. His video-interventions will be seen around the festival site projected onto a walking, inflatable blimp.
Buff Diss
Buff Diss creates free-hand drawings with masking tape that transform urban environments into sanctuaries of graphic expression. A practice of composing large scale, free-hand imagery within urban contexts gives the artist a distinct approach. The temporary nature of the tape and the boldness of his imagery combine in a highly unique form of art.
"I’m unsure where my practice sits. All my works are made free hand so I feel the process akin to drawing. A lot of works are installed live, in front of audiences so at times there is a performance aspect as well."
Fernando Llanos
Fernando Llanos is considered one of the most distinguished young Mexican video artists, presenting work in more than twenty countries, including the Guggenheim Museum New York, Montreal’s New Film and New Media Festival, World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), and Transmediale (Berlin).
For Splendour, Fernando will develop one of his roving characters and his blimp video projections specifically for the location. He will wander the festival during the nights using his moveable light source as a roving exhibition tool, interacting with the crowd through one of his many moustached characters.
Oliver Of The Sky
Oliver Of The Sky creates oversized sculptures from cardboard waste. Large, crushed drink cans and other urban artifacts, usually native to city streets, will be built on location at Woodford and placed amongst the natural environment of the festival site. His large, dead pigeons will lay amongst the more populated areas of the festival grounds.
Oliver's sculptures will be clustered structures throughout the festival, interweaving at points with the tape work of masking tape artist, Buff Diss.
Curious Creatures
2011 Splendid project
Artists:
Jimmy McGilchrist
Lachlan Dowd
Media:
Interactive digital media projection
Strange encounters are reported from the fence line as strange and beautiful creatures venture in from the surrounding woods…
Beyond the confines of the festival fencing exists a parallel world inhabited by strange and beautiful creatures.
Life sized shadows of creatures roaming behind the fence perimeter respond to the presence of the human audience on the inside. Their sounds, movements and wild cries of excitement and fear are responded to by pack members roaming near by. As audience members approach the creatures their shadows appear on the fence and they are able to interact, transformed from viewer into performer.
Curious Creatures is an interactive work that focuses on audience behaviour as the deterministic element. The audience holds the power to shape an intimate or hostile engagement that can drive the experience in unforeseen directions.
“As artists we are interested in play and tangible surreality, we are creating an illusion of appearances in which we aim to inspire childlike wonder and disbelief and encourage collective audience participation and performance." - Jimmy McGilchrist
Behind the screen
One of the biggest challenges necessary to affirm the illusion has been to eliminate any signs of art, design and technology involved in its installation and delivery.
Via rear projection, animated content is projected onto the back of site fencing clad with white cloth material. The fenced area measures 100m x 3.2m with the interactive section measuring 14m x 3.2m. A computer-based vision network analyses the real-world environment in front of the screen identifying and tracking humans, behaviour and spacial information.
The 3D characters move about in a virtual space behind the screen with the aid of 3D render engine software which operates in a similar way to a first person shooter game only characters appear as two dimensional shadows blurred and offset to mimic naturalistic shadow effects. A surround sound audio-scape installed at various locations behind the fencing and in the surrounding area creates the 3 dimensional illusion.
Location
The work activates the otherwise domineering yet banal site fencing which stretches 18 kilometers penning in the temporary city and its occupants and rupturing any link to nature and the beautiful wild surrounding woods.
Through this project we are excited about exploring new ways to combine installation art, high end animation and gaming technology for music festival audiences in non traditional locations.
"We're ecstatic! Personally I'm riddled with a sort of nervous excitement by the challenge of creating such a large scale work for such a huge and explosive audience." - Jimmy McGIlchrist
www.splendid.org.au
www.rezon8.com.au
Contribute towards Curious Creatures: http://www.pozible.com.au/index.php/archive/index/1019/description/0/0
Splendid
Splendid is a partnership between Lismore Regional Gallery, Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA), the Australia Council for the Arts and Splendour in the Grass to develop artistic talent and to offer festival audiences new creative experiences.
The program is open to young and emerging artists (under 30 years old or in the first 5 years of their practice) who work in the visual arts, theatre, dance, design, installation, architecture, digital media, sound, text, community arts and other creative pursuits.
Splendid includes a residential Arts Lab, mentorship and commissioning of new artworks to be presented at Splendour in the Grass and then toured to major festival audiences in Australia and internationally.
Splendid has been designed as a platform for artists to generate new ideas and is an exceptional opportunity to develop their conceptual and production skills and connect with leading practitioners and presenters.
"Splendid is attractive because you are dreaming up ideas while having to apply them to a real life rampaging rock context." - Willoh S Weiland, Splendid Artist
Visit the SPLENDID tent at the festival for more info.
Artworks for 2011
Splendid is proud to announce the following works to be premiered at Splendour in 2011.
Close Encounters
Jordana Maisie
Curious Creatures
Jimmy McGilchrist and collaborator Lachlan Dowd
“The Splendid initiative has been a fantastic collaboration that has and will produce some inspired presentations at the festival. 3 years down the road we look forward to showing the best possible instalments at the festival yet.” Splendour Promoter, Jessica Ducrou
SPLENDID ARTIST TALKS
Jordana Maise - At Close Encounters sculpture - 5 pm Sunday
Jimmy Mcgilchrist - At Curious Creatures installation - 6 pm Sunday
To find out more visit: www.splendid.org.au
Studio 69
Show: STUDIO69
Times: 3pm - 10pm Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Where: The Tent of Miracles
Info: www.andyforbes.com.au (2010 Fraudeville showreel)
Tent of Miracles and Porn Tsar Pictures present Sphincter Cinema Movie Production “Studio 69”.
Sphincter Cinema and Porn Tsar Pictures is Eastern Block collaboration , making amateur movie for western market of inter-anythink erotic movie.
We at Sphincter , direct you , (the star) , and let film your personal iporn movie . Come strap on and get started on friend . Love our giant love toys and huge rubber babooshkas . Take home souvenir your own personal money shot movie. Come on giant revolution bed , leave you dizzy and looking so hot for friend. Studio 69 is 30- hour marathon of adult entertainment for only your personal pleasure.
