Harvestworks is pleased to partner with Experimental Intermedia to present this performance of Julian Knowles (Australia). A night of electro-environmental audio works, including the premiere of ‘Solar Halo’ – a new AV work for solo performer and live data streaming from 10 atmospheric weather stations – 5 across the Australian Alpine Country and 5 across New York City
‘Solar Halo’ is a new work for live internet data in performance that explores the real time dynamics of weather systems. Using custom developed software, the project draws upon live data from sixteen atmospheric weather stations – eight across the Australian Alpine Country and eight across New York City. Live weather data then drive an audio-visual system with which the performer interacts.
Location: 596 Broadway Suite 602 New York NY 10012. 212-431-1130
Open to the public: Thursday December 14, 2023 @ 7 pm
Running Time of Performance: 40 minutes
Also available online: STREAM HERE
‘Solar Halo’ is a new work for live internet data in performance that explores the real time dynamics of weather systems. Using custom developed software, the project draws upon live data from 16 atmospheric weather stations – eight across the Australian Alpine Country and eight across New York City. Live weather data then drive an audio-visual system with which the performer interacts.
With the arrival of the internet and public data streams, new opportunities have arisen to explore the ways in which real-time (or live) data may be deployed in an artwork, but in this case the context is a live performance event. This recent technical development has opened the possibility of art works being responsive to live internet data, thus extending the notion of context responsive art into the datasphere so that artworks may become ‘internet enabled’.
Climate is inextricably linked to notions of the Anthropocene – an epoch in which humans have impacted global ecosystems. Given the struggle to make science heard within public discourse around climate change, there is a need to connect people to climate challenges. The creative deployment of data provides an opportunity to communicate the challenges that fragile climate systems face as a result of human activity.
On a creative level, the project is inspired by philosopher Timothy Morton’s notion of the ‘hyperobject’ – entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place. Climate change and the internet can be seen as clear examples, vast in scale and forever present in the background.
“Hyperobjects are here, right here in my social and experiential space. Like faces pressed against a window, they leer at me menacingly: their very nearness is what menaces (Timothy Morton, 2013)”
The project brings these two hyperobjects together to help us approach the otherwise incomprehensible.
This development of this work has been supported by the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture and Macquarie University.
BIOS
Julian Knowles is a composer, performer and media artist, working with new and emerging technologies. His creative work spans the fields of composition for theatre, dance, film and television, electronic music, and media art. In the course of his career Julian has worked with many of Australia’s best-known musicians in the experimental music scene and has been a member of the Australian electro-environmental audio group Social Interiors (with Rik Rue and Shane Fahey) since the mid 1990s. As a solo artist, Julian’s music and audio/visual works have been presented at events and venues such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Audiosphere, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, Experimental Intermedia, What is Music?, Australian Perspecta, Liquid Architecture, the Melbourne International Film Festival, VIVID Sydney, and the Sydney Opera House. Julian is a founder and leader (with Donna Hewitt) of the mediatized performance group Macrophonics. He is Professor of Music, Media and Creative Practice at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
MEDIA LINKS:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianknowles
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL