BLEED Festival
‘you can never touch your shadow’ was commissioned and produced by Campbelltown Arts Festival as part of BLEED 2022. BLEED (Biennial Live Event in the Everyday Digital) was conceived by Campbelltown City Council through Campbelltown Arts Centre, and The City of Melbourne through Arts House. BLEED 2022 is produced and presented by Campbelltown City Council through Campbelltown Arts Centre, and City of Melbourne through Arts House, Taipei Performing Arts Centre and Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei. BLEED has been supported by the Taiwan Ministry of Culture and Cultural Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Sydney.
BLEED is a six year project exploring how the online makes us feel. Taking place between the live and digital, this is a space to visit, watch, listen and read your way through the strangeness of our IRL and URL existence. In 2022 BLEED considers the potential and problems of borders, exploring the sites of intersection between and within humans, technology, nationhood, and our emotional and digital geographies.
Voyant AR was commissioned by the Festival to create an augmented reality exhibit with accomplished First Nations artist Dean Cross for his work ‘you can never touch your shadow’ bringing together three mediums; one still image, one moving image and an Augmented Reality (AR) sculpture. The work calls on Australia’s largest bird of prey, the Wedge-tailed Eagle, as a vehicle for thoughts on transcendence, mobility and time.
The ‘Wedgie’ relies on the invisible force of thermal updrafts to be able to fly and travel. These animals traverse geographic, natural, cultural and generational borders. Whilst capable of travelling long distances, these eagles mostly stay within their territories, often for generations. They are not bound by human metrics of borders or distance, and their understanding of time, scale and space is different to our own.
This tangible but elusive creature occupies physical space yet evades the grasp of humankind. This confluence between materiality and immateriality is what prompted Dean to replicate this physical being digitally, in the untouchable and disembodied realm of Augmented Reality (AR).
CREDITS
Photos/Videos by Rolling Media Productions, BLEED 2022 at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
Festival: bleedonline.net
Dean Cross: deancross.com
Photo/Video by Rolling Media Productions, BLEED 2022 at Campbelltown Arts Centre.
