Our in conversation at the UTS Gallery has some interesting insights into the nature of collaborative practice and how the work come to be.

Amala Groom, Andrew Burrell and Madeleine Collie in conversation from UTS Gallery & Art Collection on Vimeo.

Exhibition catalogue

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can’t buy me love is extended by a publication with production images, an introduction by curator Stella Rosa McDonald, a conversation between artists Amala Groom and Andrew Burrell and an essay by Madeleine Collie.

Design by Daryl Prondoso.

Uncanny Landscapes: Tactile and Experiential Encounters with Ecological Data
Zoë Sadokierski, Monica Monin and Andrew Burrell

"Communicating complex ecological issues such as anthropogenic climate change and the effects of capitalist culture on diverse ecologies is difficult. Challenges include communicating phenomena that occur over unimaginable timescales and are often invisible to the naked eye; making these global phenomena relatable on a local and individual scale; and, instilling an understanding of the human species as enmeshed (Morton 2012) and entangled (Tsing et al. 2017) within complex ecologies, in order to foster attention and care for the world."

In: Making Data: Materializing Digital Information
Editor: Ian Gwilt
Bloomsbury Publishing, 24 Mar 2022

Via an invitation from Runway Journal I have spent the week at the Bundanon education centre, in residence with members of the Runway team and other contributors to issue 45: Asemic. (As is so often the way with these things, there may have been Karaoke!)

Following a process of discovery via non-human mark making in the landscape, this has led to the ongoing development of a new work overGround:underStory.

Image: One of many lidar scans of wombat hills and burrows created during the residency that inform the ongoing making of this new work.

Bundanon is on Wodi Wodi and Yuin Country and I acknowledge the Wodi Wodi and Yuin people's continued connection to the Country I spent time on, and that sovereignty of that land was never ceded.

Abstract:

This article explores a way of thinking about virtual environments and how they might be used to create new spaces, not as an alternate reality, but as an integrated part of reality ‐ regardless of this reality being physical and/or digital. Virtual environments can be seen as an extension of reality ‐ the physical and the virtual sitting side by side with one, more often than not, bleeding into the other. The virtual is not separable from the physical and vice versa. This position will be formed by directly referring to traditions that stem from processes and ideas around materiality, poetics and philosophy rather than centring on technical or hardware specifics. At the centre of this exploration is an ongoing investigation into the role of memory and imagination in narrative spaces in immersive virtual environments, stemming from the author’s background in interactive Installation art and designing for virtual environments. The article’s subtitle refers to Robert Morris’s 1978 article, ‘The present tense of space’, which informs the article’s overall position.

Publisher: Intellect
Citation: Virtual Creativity, 2021, 11, (1), pp. 91-109
Issue Date: 2021-06-01

Recently published in the Journal of Documentation: emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-05-2019-0078/full/html

Purpose
This paper demonstrates the possibility for the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums sector to employ playful, immersive discovery interfaces for their collections and raises awareness of some of the considerations that go into the decision to use such technology and the creation of the interfaces.

Design/methodology/approach
This is a case study approach using the methodology of research through design. The paper introduces two examples of immersive interfaces to archival data created by the authors, using these as a springboard for discussing the different kinds of embodied experiences that users have with different kinds of immersion, for example the exploration of the archive on a flat screen, a data 'cave' or arena, or virtual reality.

Findings
The role of such interfaces in communicating with the audience of an archive is considered, for example in allowing users to detect structure in data, particularly in understanding the role of-1-geographic or other spatial elements in a collection, and in shifting the locus of knowledge production from individual to community. It is argued that these different experiences draw on different metaphors in terms of users' prior experience with more well known technologies, for example 'a performance' versus 'a tool' versus 'a background to a conversation'. Originality/value The two example interfaces discussed here are original creations by the authors of this paper. They are the first uses of mixed reality for interfacing with the archives in question. One is the first mixed reality interface to an audio archive. The discussion has implications for the future of interfaces to galleries, archives, libraries and museums more generally.

Doi: 10.1108/JD-05-2019-0078
Publication Date: 2020
Publication Name: Journal of Documentation