Hyde Park’s Moreton Bay fig trees are at the centre of ARia: Song Unseen.
Edith Cowan University (ECU) experts from the School of Arts and Humanities and School of Education have been selected to take part in the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA)’s highly competitive boorda yeyi mentorship program.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker and ECU Bachelor of Screen Production co-ordinator, Dr Catherine Gough-Brady, and audio-visual artist-researcher and Forrest Creative and Performance Fellow in ECU's Centre for People, Place and Planet, Dr Cassandra Tytler, are working as part of a collective to create an augmented reality (AR) site-specific work in Hyde Park.
The pair will work with sound artist W. Sze Tsang for the next three months, on ARia: Song Unseen, a work that uses AR and sound to explore the interconnections between people, place, history and human responses to the current ecological crisis.
Dr Catherine Gough-Brady said that as she co-creates this work, she thinks about how her documentary filmmaking skills can be transferred to this new medium of AR.
"Rather than filming the park, I am thinking about how elements of the trees, insects, and animals can influence the sounds and visual elements that we create," said Dr Gough-Brady.
"It's an exciting development for my creative practice and my research."
Dr Cassandra Tytler said that the project gives her an opportunity to explore how AR and sound can open new ways of working through spatial relationships in site-specific art.
"I'm particularly interested in how stories, histories, and ecologies emerge differently when encountered through technological mediation, and how audiences engage with these shifting modes of interaction," said Dr Tytler.
"It's a valuable opportunity to extend my practice and reflect on how extended reality can support new ways of grappling with the complexity of wicked problems."
PICA's boorda yeyi mentorship was created in Boorloo on Whadjuk Noongar boodja and takes its title from the language of this place meaning 'future now'. It invites artists to consider a broad range of cutting-edge technologies in creative works that are expansive and transformative.
The boorda yeyi mentorship will also cover the cost of software engineer, Kim Smith, and experienced place-based artist Tom Mùller who will provide advice and assistance to help develop ARia: Song Unseen.
Find out more about ARia: Song Unseen and the boorda yeyi mentorship program.
