Troy Innocent, Joel Collins, Indae Hwang, Yun Tae Nam 2011

Dimensions: approx. 5 x 11 metre area; height variable
Medium: Aquaplate water tanks, laser cut icons, aluminium poles, plastic drum, anemometers, collected water

Commissioned as part of the City of Yarra’s Environmental Public Art Project. Drop Zone is located on Swan St in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond.

The next world war will be fought over water.

Many environmental reports discuss the increasing scarcity of fresh water around the world. In 1955 the UN had three countries listed as ‘Water Scarce’, by 1990 thirteen additional countries were on the list, and by 2025 a further ten are expected to join those. These locations are all UN recognised flashpoints for potential conflict over water resources.

This artwork envisions a future for Australia where the impact of decreasing water availability has had a more dramatic effect than any of the predictions. The shortage is so severe that military-like water ‘drop zones’, constructed of modified rainfall storage tanks have been established across the public parks of the City of Yarra for access on a first come, first serve basis. However, as the water is only replenished through rain catchment the tanks may only offer infrequent relief for the City of Yarra residents, standing as hollow reminders of the effects of inaction on the shaping of sustainable national water use.

The water tank is becoming a contemporary symbol of the Australian household, much like the Hills Hoist clothesline once was. The work incorporates this identity, using ready-made water tanks arranged on a site marked out as a resource drop zone much like those seen in realtime strategy games. Situated within the tanks are small totemic sculptures that float on top of the water within the tank. When the water level is low they are only partially visible; when the water level is high they rise appearing to bloom from the top of the tank. This metaphorical blooming references the appearance of flowers after desert rains; the connection between water and life.

noemaflux describes an act of shifting perception. The work is centered on an augmented reality that enables different ways of seeing the city. Participants use AR markers and generative writing systems to create an experience of of abstract virtual art in urban environments.

At ISEA 2011 from 14-21 September 2011 // details here.

Images to come after installation of the work this week…

This project just finished up in February this year. My role was to develop a visual language for urban codemaking, IDEOTAG laser cut design and connect these with a street game for the Urban Codemakers.

The Urban Codemakers operated from Guildford Lane Gallery between August 2010 and February 2011. Their urban renewal project sought to rezone the city through play. It consists of three guilds, street signage, 100+ blog posts, four blogs, a street game, 768 IDEOTAGs, a public demonstration, a public information video in Federation square, a series of academic articles, and three urban planning proposals for the City of Melbourne. An archive of their activity is at urbancodemakers.net

The project transforms the Guildford Lane Complex into a laneway populated by guilds from the Micronation of Ludea. The ‘urban codemakers’ of these guilds investigate and cultivate networks that shape urban space. The history of the laneway is activated via an imagined future transformed by socio-economic and cultural forces. The guild signs are portals to a crossmedia narrative of this story.

While playful, the concept critiques and investigates the space in which it is situated by articulating the practice of ‘urban codemaking’. This is the main activity of the guilds. In this practice the urban fabric of Melbourne/Ludea is explored via media ecologies made of networks of systems and rules that are social, institutional, spatial, commercial and cultural. The story behind this practice by the guilds and tribes of the Ludea is told via a crossmedia narrative linked to the installation in situ.

Perspective Glitch Sonified
Troy Innocent & Indae Hwang 2010
lasercut acrylic, webcam, overhead display, software, sound, language system

In this system players create icons using a language system from the Micronation of Ludea. These icons are placed under a camera in a 4×4 grid. The camera reads the colour and complexity of each icon in 16 steps to generate sound from a 16 step pattern in realtime.

Exhibited at make: Ogaki in Gifu, Japan. This project has been developed as part of the Artist in Residence program at IAMAS in Gifu, Japan. Thanks to Yosuke Kawamura and Atsuhito Sekiguchi.

noemaflux
Troy Innocent & Indae Hwang 2010
corflute, AR markers, mixed media, software and custom mobile device with sound

In noemaflux, we are interested in creating new experiences of urban space and different ways of seeing the city. The title expresses this meaning. ‘noema’ relates to the ‘act of perceiving’ in phenomenological experience. ‘flux’ refers a state of constant shift and change. This term expresses the experience of being in a mixed reality where perception is changed via digital interventions into the real world.

noemaflux : an urban habitat for artificial life via mixed realities from Troy Innocent on Vimeo.

Players use mobile devices to explore streets and laneways and find augmented reality (AR) markers integrated into the urban environment. These act both as signposts that indicate the space of the work and as gateways into the artificial world. The symbols themselves are both elements of an invented language (that of the Micronation of Ludea) and machine-readable AR markers, thereby have dual meaning. By interacting with the work, players enter into a symbiotic relationship with the artificial lifeforms in this world.

In noemaflux familiar urban spaces are reinvented and inscribed with new meaning via a mixed reality. In this new space, the main street and adjoining laneways of the city of Ogaki are populated by media creatures from the Micronation of Ludea. Discover these creatures by finding AR markers hidden in the streets. As you move about the city you carry digital seeds that pollinate each site creating a crossmedia ecology that connects people, urban spaces, signs and digital systems. The work explores the connections between artificial systems such as language and natural processes abundant in life.

Exhibited at ‘Product as New Art’ at the Ogaki Biennale 2010. This project has been developed as part of the Artist in Residence program at IAMAS in Gifu, Japan. Thanks to Yosuke Kawamura, Atsuhito Sekiguchi, Daichi Misawa and Mitsuya Watanabe.

autograf screening in DreamWorlds, an exhibition of Australian moving image in public space curated by Melinda Rackham. VIP Official Opening of DreamWorlds on 6.30pm Saturday September 4th in Sanlitun Village, Beijing, China. There is more information including a lovely essay from Melinda at the dreamworlds website.

autograf is an asemic writing system that generates tags by recombining marks and gestures used in graffiti tagging. The languages generated by this process are both familiar and alien; its tags look like letters but remain indecipherable.

It is constantly and rapidly reinscribing itself as if being generated by a gang of autonomous mecha-graf artists. The tags consume and erase one another and those that survive reproduce with one another to create stylistic hybrids. The processes behind this interaction are modeled on an experimental ecosytem made of language—tags have energy, they live and die, replicate, and may steal or give energy to their neighbours. This ecosystem is sonified; the generated soundtrack reflects the ebb and flow of energy in the system.

The Urban Codemakers project I have been involved in launched on Wednesday night of this week. This a collective of guilds situated in the Guildford Lane Complex in Melbourne set to rezone the city through play. More info at their site.

Opening comments from yours truly:

Good evening everyone. Thankyou for coming out on this cold, dark night.

I will speak briefly about the history of this project. Personally, I have issues with words so I am reading a prepared speech.

Whilst undertaking a residency in this gallery during December last year I was approached by a group called the Urban Codemakers to assist in their submission for the City of Melbourne’s Laneways Commission program. Apparently, they had a project in mind that would put to use the iconographic languages that have manifested in my various digital media and public art works over the years.

The Urban Codemakers originate in the Micronation of Ludea.

If you have played a game then you have been to Ludea. It is that space you go to when you are ‘in-game’, in the zone, or otherwise immersed in play.

For the Ludeans, this state is the basis of their culture, their language, their way of life. Patterns and logic of the game become their way of seeing the entire world. The ontology of the game world is the ontology of their reality. Reality is game.

I also have a personal connection with the Micronation of Ludea. Indulge me in a moment of personal reflection. I spent most of the 90s immersed in a virtual world of digital icons, plastic knowbots and artificial life. During September of 2001, while exhibiting a work entitled Mixed Reality, I rediscovered reality. Four years later in 2005, I became involved with the Ludeans. They helped me at a difficult time in my life as I made the shift across to reality. Whilst still a ‘reality newbie’ I can get where they are coming from – spend a significant amount of time ‘in-game’ and the real world is coloured by the that experience. It is encoded in your way of being.

So, the Ludeans have come to City of Melbourne. They are here to apply their logic to our city. Tonight is an opportunity to join them in this project.

The Guildford Lane complex has been remapped via the appearance of eight guild signs installed only late last week.

Workers in orange overalls and white boots are active tonight in acts of urban codemaking. You have seen an example of this activity outside the gallery this evening.

However, the Urban Codemakers tell me that this is only the beginning.

Over the next ten weeks the Urban Codemakers are preparing a game that will be played on the streets of Melbourne. You can join the fieldwork operations leading up to this citywide act of play tonight on one of the computers installed here for that purpose.

On behalf of the Urban Codemakers, I invite you to rezone the city through play!

Tokyo Wonder Site
TWS Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan
April 6 – 29

The focus of the residency is research into urban art environments and locative media projects that respond to the urban spaces of Tokyo. This will relate to an ongoing project to establish the Micronation of Ludea, a crossmedia fictional world made of play. The urban fabric of Tokyo may be seen as a set of media ecologies made of networks of systems and rules that are social, institutional, spatial, commercial and cultural. The Micronation of Ludea wishes to play in these ecologies!

Design After Nature (image: Jon McCormack)

Guildford Lane Gallery
20-24 Guildford Lane, Melbourne
December 3 – 20

Ollie Bown, Joel Collins, Alan Dorin, Alice Eldridge, Mark Guglielmetti, Indae Hwang, Troy Innocent, Jon McCormack, Gordon Monro, Ben Porter

Design after Nature features research into biologically inspired computational models to develop new methods for computer creativity. The works use advanced techniques for computer graphics modelling that are applied to problems in the design and construction of rich, interactive visual environments. In these simulated ecosystems, three-dimensional entities develop and respond to their environment. The production of these virtual spaces has hitherto been difficult with existing technology. The works have been developed with a software tool capable of a broader range of expression than previous systems, and one that can be mastered by designers working with digital media.

The exhibition consists of sound works, interactive installation, generative systems, alife models, screen-based works and kinetic art. It demonstrates the outcomes of a three-year ARC Discovery project undertaken at Monash University’s Centre for Electronic Media Art.

autograf (dual-screen version) at biotope

Frankston Arts Centre : Cube 37
37 Davey St, Frankston
July 14 – August 9

Ollie Bown, Joel Collins, Alan Dorin, Alice Eldridge, Mark Guglielmetti, Indae Hwang, Troy Innocent, Jon McCormack, Gordon Monro, Ben Porter

biotope is a collection of experimental ecosystems created as part of a international research project undertaken at the Center for Electronic Media Art, Monash University. The works were developed as part of an ongoing investigation into a systemic approach to electronic media art.