Immersive Environments, Before the Storm...

On a roadtrip along the south of Iceland I came across a few environments that were so unique, inspiring, otherworldly, and stunning that they will no doubt show themselves later in experiments with immersive environments in the studio.







Our journey was rich with drama, danger, and doubt as we got caught in a GIANT Icelandic wind storm that picked up the earth and moved it around. We saw ice, dust, dirt, and volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajökull (THAT volcano) flying through the air, creating large walls we would drive through, or it would whip across the road threatening to catch us with it. The storm hit us at Jökullsárlón, the glacier lagoon, breaking the drivers side door and whipping us into meek submission to the true power of nature.

We would drive through conditions so dramatic and theatrical it felt like a film, all at once we would be surrounded by dust and ash, with only our headlights to find the white lines of the road in the dark Icelandic winter, then all at once it would break, and we would see a force of wind moving an enormous wall of dirt, dust, and ash across the wide open plains beneath the glaciers. At one point we were in the eye of the storm, encircled by sky high barriers of dust and ash, moving forward with us, as if it was doing it's best to protect us from itself but it couldn't keep it's ferocious side at bay and it changed direction, we drove through it's sky high barriers and into more lashings and whippings from every direction. It was a 5 hour game of tag that would hit the car and we would have to be at peace with the bullying of our superior.

My camera broke (due to ash) but above is a few snaps of things we saw before the storm.

Feels like heima.

After a trip home to Australia to be a part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival's keynote project Visible City I am back in Iceland! This time I will spend December at SIM Artist Residency in Reykjavik.

Here's a short film that highlights a few ethics and circumstances of Iceland that has captured my heart about this country.

The City Stripped Back - Underground Spaces

Miru Kim guides us through her work and the ideas of a city's underground, abandoned, disused or historical sites. She finds the city's alternate identity that above ground dwellers are often oblivious to.

I find the works that inhabit collapsing, abandoned, decaying or pre-demolition sites the most beautiful. It makes me want to further explore unused and crumbling places around the city and it's poetic parallels to humanity and our constant flux between destruction and rebuilding, evolution and resurgence amidst the discarded and wasteful.

Resident - Gibraltar

Gibraltar is the city of walls. Crumbling walls, strong impenetrable walls, walls being built, knocked down, decaying, inhabited by the Macaque monkeys, walls literally dividing a mountain, walls of scaffolding, walls stained of rich defensive war history, walls with canons, walls with bars and windows, walls of Mediterranean buildings, walls that seems to kiss, wet cave walls, busy alley walls and siege tunnel walls winding endlessly inside a giant rock. There are WALLS here! EVERYWHERE! I have always loved to feel my fingertips run along brick walls, coarse walls, smooth walls, walls that anchor space. Walls that anchor me.

It has me thinking about what kind of walls we build, and why? Walls we build in our own lives, walls we build in our homes, in our cities, in our societies and our countries. Walls, borders, boundaries, city limits, the infamous Brisbane "Boundary Streets", the borders between the EU countries, the border between the USA and Mexico. Walls we build in our relationships, in reaction to our differences, walls that divide us as people, walls that we break ourselves on, or even walls we break our humanity over. The walls that create spaces, and hubs, and Chinatowns and the canals of Venice. The walls architects build from a single idea.


It makes me curious, to build a wall...

Collapse, out of Iceland

the beauty in chaos
is the point of our
collapse

This work took over the Sue Benner Theatre at Metro Arts, June 26, 2010.
It was showcased alongside new works by Brisbane artists in performance, installation and visual arts as a part of Cross-Stitch: No Pluto, Just Stars curated by Lauren Clelland.

It was inspired by my time in Iceland while at Nes Artist Residency. Even though I was still at the residency when the show went up in Brisbane Australia, a dynamic collaboration between myself, Hamish Clift, Jasmin Coleman and Kat Danger Sawyer brought the work into being as an immersive environment with sound, lighting, masses of destruction, haze, bubbles, and dirt.

"Collapse" hints at the fragile state of chaos, and our humanity within it.

More 'Collapse' images can be found here: http://homepage.mac.com/h.clift/Collapse/large-1.html
or on my main website: http://web.me.com/vote.bohemia

Architecture as Installation

A fascinating look at architecture, urban space, light as a medium and "the absence of presence". Inspiring! Thoughts of architecture as installation, and installation as architecture really calling me to do something urban.

We live by the Greenland sea-side

A beautiful cover of Holly Miranda's "Waves" by Peter Silberman of New York band The Antlers.

I've been carrying this mood when I close my eyes. Standing at the oceans rocky edge of Northern Iceland.
And thinking more about music, and my desire to play piano.