FEEDBACK Tristan G Swell

Professional Proposal

Opportunity: Swell Festival

Working title : Habel

Artist statement

Think about the Ephemerality of the human experience and the the limitations of human activity and human wisdom. As time passes is it an illusion that life has meaning, purpose and significance in the grand scheme of eternity. Is our existence based solely on the fleeting present, on the self, on expression or through the experience of connection. Everything that exists has been and what no longer exists has been only existed a little longer than what has not existed. Is there a quote you could use here that encapsulates this fundamental existential musing? Written as it is, it veers towards gneralised pontification. Either really flesh it out in your own words, or use someone elses. Here I’m thinking there must be a good bible verse relevant?

Sculpture details

Habel is a virtual artwork accessed via a geolocation augmented reality mobile phone application. The application is free and available from the app store and will enable visitors to view and interact with the work. Habel consists of 100 human figures located (in various locations?) along Currumbin beach (refer to image 3). An audio element of osillating theta wave frequencies and glossolalia accompanies the work and can be listened to through mobile devices and headphones. As the participant moves along Currumbin beach with the app the figures and audio fade in and out of existance. 

The application will be hosted by the artists server as well as google play store and apple store and made publicly accessible in kind by the artist.

There are no physical space requirements for the artwork as the application is triggered by virtual geolocation markers (refer to image 4). Meaning, that the artwork alters depending on the location of the participant. Great!

A marketing campaign will be included to raise awareness of the works existance due to the nature of augmented reality. In that it is invisible to the naked eye and requires active engagement. This can be provided in kind by the artist and include social media and printed media publications. Your page in the Swell catalogue would feature detaisl about how to experience the work, however perhaps consider a small billboard, or stand, or other structure that not only functions as instruction but doubles as a ‘physical’ sculpture.

Dimensions (mm) H x W x L:   2000mm x 10000mm x 100 000mm 

Footprint of Installation (mm x mm): 2000mm x 10000mm x 100 000mm 

Weight (kg): 0 

List materials used:

geolocation augmented reality application for iOS, andriod and windows

Sculpture Sale Price incl GST (if applicable) and 33% commission: NA

Individual Sculpture Pricing where individual works are for sale: NA

PERSONAL STATEMENT

With 14 years experience in the IT industry, covering roles involving programming, asset production, hardware and retail, the transition to contemporary fine arts has seen digital assets become integral to my practice and collaborations. A solid foundation in digital technologies has allowed me to adapt in a rapidly evolving industry. Industry experience enables me to apply my skills to teach and lead teams throughout the north coast with various community organisations, projects and events.

EDUCATION

2015 BA Fine Arts, Queensland College of Arts, South Bank (current studies)

Major Sculpture Minor Interactive Media

Cumulative GPA 6.385

2014 Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts with Distinction, North Coast Institute of TAFE, Murwillumbah

2013 Diploma Visual Arts, North Coast Institute of TAFE, Murwillumbah

2012 Cert IV Visual Arts and Contemporary Craft , North Coast Institute of TAFE, Murwillumbah

2009 Cert IV SBHO Webdesign, North Coast Institute of TAFE, Grafton

2003 Cert IV Information Technology, North Coast Institution of TAFE, Lismore

2003 Cert III Small Business Management, North Coast Insitute of TAFE, Lismore

2000 BA Fine Arts, Southern Cross University (deferred)

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2016

'Know that I am' Kingscliff NSW, installation

'Time Travellers' Kingscliff NSW, event exhibition

2015

C3 Christmas Celebration Service, Murwillumbah Civic Centre, Murwillumbah NSW, event exhibition

'Villians and heroes' Pottsville fund raiser, Pottsville NSW, event exhibition

Thankful day, Kingscliff NSW, event exhibition

2014

'Reflection' Kingscliff NSW, solo exhibition

'I'm talking to you', Lone goat gallery, Byron bay, group exhibition

Noel Chettle Memorial Art Prize, Murwillumbah TAFE campus , Highly commended, group exhibition

Byron Bay Arts Classic, Byron Community Center NSW, group exhibition

C3 Christmas Celebration Service, Murwillumbah civic centre, event exhibition

Health and well-being festival , Murwillumbah NSW, event exhibition

2013

'Seven', Murwillumbah Tafe campus NSW, group exhibition

'A book about death' , Murwillumbah Regional Gallery NSW, group exhibition

2012

'SHIFT', Murwillumbah TAFE campus NSW, group exhibition

AWARDS

2015 League of Legends, Ocean Week art prize, winner

2014 Noel Chettle Memorial art prize (in the discipline of life drawing) ,highly commended

2013 Deacons - servant hearted, c3 Church Kingscliff

ARTIST STATEMENT

Interdisciplinary Sculpture 3 3336QCA
Contemporary Art Project

Working Title

Trinity

See Listen Speak

Trinity explores the capacity for New Media Arts to express abstract concepts through the cross pollination of the physical, the digital and the spiritual.

This exploration stems from an interest of where technology sits within the context of the traditional church, Abrahamic religion and spirituality. Entering into a discussion regarding the dichotomy of the principal values of the church system and the nature of technology. Participants are invited to experience emerging technologies such as; Sublime environmental Virtual reality, spacial audio, theta wave oscillation, synchronous decibel modulation and glossolalia translation.

Aim of the project

The intention of my practice in 2017 is to explore the capacity for New Media to express abstract concepts throught the cross polination of the physical, the digital and the spiritual.  
This exploration stems from an interest of where technology sits within the context of the traditional church, abrahamic religion and spirituality. Entering into a discussion regarding the dicotomy of the pricipal values of the church system and the nature of technology.

The aim of this contemporary art project is to focus on discussing collective and personal spaces that are created to deepen meditation and connection to the divine through technology.

Three Virtual Reality(VR) headsets are arranged on a plinth/table, with each of the power cables to the VR headsets coming out of a bible located in the base of the table.. Each of the VR headsets contain an individual experience relating to methods of connecting to divine.  

The content for the VR is as follows:

1. Speak: voice to tongues translation 

When the participant speaks, the sound of tongues is played back in the headphone, and the VR screen brightens to white during the play back. This parallels the real experience of speaking in tongues, ones intention is to speak a word of phrase, yet what they hear is an unknown language being spoken.

1. Listen: spacial and fixed point audio with no visual

The VR headset has no visual, making the viewer blind. But there are two audio components; the fixed point audio is theta wave osilations; the spacial audio is tongues, as the participant turns their head the audios fixed point in space shifts from left to right. Giving the illusion that the audio is coming from a fixed point within the room. What this work is exploring is receiving preyer, which can be an intense experience, your role is simply to listen. What the participant is hearing is an actual prayer. The theta waves portion is intended to induce deep meditation, which can be unsettling depending on the current frequency of the participants brain waves.   

1. See: virtual space with fixed point audio

The virtual space is a desert, with mountains in the distance with the sun above. This space is highly symbolic referencing christian imagery with the intention of creating a contemplative space. The audio component is embeded with alpha waves, which are intended to increase a persons capacity for concetration and contemplation.

The content of the VR is to support the installation and could play no content at all.  

This work is now intended to be installed at the POP gallery, Brisbane. The interaction with the work and installation playing a roll in the interpretation of the work. And can function independently if required. This consideration was made as VR technology within the museum/gallery context require specific daily maintanence and supervision. This was discovered through research initally was focused on current artistic application of VR experiences such as Jordan Wolfson's Real Violence and Ian Cheng  Entropy Wrangler Cloud. 
Generally VR is currently used for event exhibitions as it is an emerging technology. 

Theoretical Framework

What was the motivation for doing the work?

The motivation for this work, and my practice in general revolves around a series of profound life experiences. In 2005, I had neurological failure, which resulted in multiple organ failure. I spent several years in and out of hospital, my marriage failed, my health continued to decline. I remember passing at one point at hospital.  For me, there was nothingness, I knew where I was, and I knew that the life I had led up till that point had led me there. By 2009 my health had declined sufficiently that the doctors said "theres no easy way to say this, you have three years to live.... You will need to get your affairs sorted out". Then discharged me for the last time. . That knowing, shifts your perspective and your priorities.
Ive since travelled australia, met the woman of my dreams, have children and an amazing group of people in my life.Ive also since given my life to god, 
Now keep in mind  I have always believed in god, tho I had never actively participated in a church or ritual. So i was water baptised. When I rose out of the water world with new perception, I could see differently, the sun had a shimmer to its reflection and time was dislocated, i felt an intense disconnection to the now. It is during this time that I also received the baptism of the holy spirit. 
Without the baptism  of the holy spirit, you can be a christian, but never experience the giftings of the holy spirit, which is most noticably expressed through tongues. It was after this baptism that my life trully changed and can only be described as a rollercoaster. My arts practice instantly changed, my work taking on a deeper critical exploration. There is a yearning in the core of my being to express through the arts, the transendental.

Towards the end of my travels I was camping on the cliffs of the Nullabour plains, the moon was tipping just as the sun rose over the ocean. I took a photo. It just didnt do it justice. I wanted to be able to capture that momemt. To share that with other people.  
This is why I am now engaging with New Media technology.  It gives me the possibility to explore and share an experience. Allows you to create objects and vast spaces that are invisible to the naked eye. But as a parallel to faith, can be seen through those equipped to see.
And the more I engage with programming language, applying realworld physics and formula, creating artificial intelligence and spatial calculations the more I realise the truth that "Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of God". ( Dr. Hermann Gottlieb 2013)

What is the issue or concern addressed in the work?

Over 50% of the worlds population, an estimated 3.6 billion people identify as adherents of an Abrahamic religion (Hunter 2017), Yet the use of technology as a vehicle for exploring connection to the divine has yet to be critically explored. This has be a result of the dicotomy of the pricipal values of the church system and the nature of technology. This being that technology is the new tower of babel, the self focus and seclusionistic.
After all the purpose of the church is to worship God (Luke 4:8; John 4:23; Rev. 4:10), study the bible (2 Tim. 2:15; 1 Cor. 4:6), pray (Acts 2:42), love one another (John 13:35; Phil. 1:1-4), help each other (Gal. 6:2), partake of baptism and the Lord's supper (Luke 22:19-20), to learn how to live as godly people (Titus 2:11-12), and to be equipped to evangelize the world (Eph. 4:12; Matt. 28:18-20). The church's very existance requires an active community. 

Technology privileges the first-person point of view; even in third-person perspective apps, the user’s experience is intensely personal. “VR is very isolationist,You put it on and you forget your surroundings; you forget the people around you.” (Planck 2015) The fear regarding very nature of the technology is that it may amplify current cultural emphasis on the individual. 

In an essay first published in 2007—when the website Second Life (where members interact via computer avatars) was the highest-profile harbinger of VR—Orthodox priest Jonathan Tobias identifies VR as a sin the ancient church called fantasia. Unlike healthy make-believe, fantasia “rejects the one reality created by the Holy Trinity.” Tobias invokes one of Scripture’s more dramatic stories of sinful rebellion: “If ever the Tower of Babel were raised again, it would be here, in cyberspace.” (Poteet 2016)

The intention within this contemporary art project was to explore this position through the virtual reality experiences. One for each of the common expressions for connecting to the divine, speaking in tongues, receiving prayer and going to a place for contemplation. This is grounded by active engagement with Rhema and lobos, sculpturally through the inclusion of the bible in the final installation. The communal setting yet individualistic experience is intended to stimulate the dialogue. 

Studio Methodology

The process of creating a digital work is, in my experience, vastly different from creating work in other mediums. You need to have a complete vision of what you want to create. How it will look, how it will sound, how it will function. You need to have assets created in advance (tho these can be substituted at a later date). The code you intend on creating does not have a lot of room for play, every detail needs to be mapped out in advance. It either works, or it doesnt. A colon(:) or semicolon (;) could be the deciding factor in success of failure. For artists we are always chasing that image in our mind, to express it as perfectly as we can in the physical realm. And this ability to spacially map out in your mind what you to achieve, aids you in mapping out the structure of your digital artwork. This method of visualisation also draws strong parallels to engaging in prayer, requiring disengaging with your physical environment, and engaging with the unseen.

For more information regarding the studio methodology of each aspect of the work click the following links below
Speak
See
Listen
Modification of the virtual reality headsets
Mockups of POP gallery installation
Preparation for POP gallery installation

Research

Initially research was focused on New media artists and VR artists such as  Ian Cheng's VR - Entropy Wrangler Cloud and  Jordan Wolfson's VR - Real Violence

Christian artists have been attempting to convey the transendental for the past 2000 years, through claratas and representation of christ, saints in paintings, altar pieces and relics and through architectual design to enchance the presence of god and providing a place of contemplation.

The works Chapel of Sacred Mirrors by Alex Grey ( the church he built )  and Rothko Chapel by Mark Rothko are intended to be contemplative spaces.
Chapel of Sacred Mirrors by Alex Grey is a transdenominational church and organization dedicated to the realization of a shared 1985 vision of the American artists Alex and Allyson Grey to build a contemporary public Chapel as 'a sanctuary for spiritual renewal through contemplation of transformative art' (Miller 2008)  The mission statement is "Building an enduring sanctuary of visionary art to inspire every pilgrim's creative path and embody the values of love and evolutionary wisdom" (sculpture.org 2017).
 Rothko Chapel by Mark Rothko was initially to be specifically Roman Catholic, now non-denominational, It was to be a destination, a place of pilgrimage far from the center of art (in this case, New York) where seekers of Rothko's newly "religious" artwork could journey (fampeople 2012).  At the dedication, Dominique de Menil said, "We are cluttered with images and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine," 

Conclusion

The final work far surpases my original intention. Trinity successfully expresses each of the three aspects of spirituality that were proposed, by creating a virtual space, employing spacial audio and voice translation.
The opportunity to exhibit in the POP gallery, Brisbane, brought with it far more challenges than anticipated. The original intention was to create a work that was event based, running only for a day at a time, and manned at all times. Now the demand is that the work runs for 4 weeks, with very little supervision or downtime. The software had to be refined far more than in a normal project, and far more considerations had to be made in the installation of the work. Particularly around security and safety.  

Reference list

Hunter, Preston 2017.  "Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents". Adherents.com. Accessed  31 May 2017 url: https://www/Adherents.com

Poteet, Rev Mike 2016. "Christians and Virtual reality" UMC.org. Accessed  31 May 2017 URL: http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/blogs-commentaries/post/christians-and-virtual-reality

Plank, Mark 2015. "Oculus' next big move is to make VR a social experience" Engaget . Accessed 31 May 2017. URL:https://www.engadget.com/2015/05/25/oculus-social-experience/

Fampeople 2012. "Mark Rothko : biography" fampeople.com. Accessed 27 May 2017. URL:http://www.fampeople.com/cat-mark-rothko_5

 Miller, David Ian 2008. "LSD Helped Forge Alex Grey's Spiritual, Artistic and Love Lives". San Francisco Chronicle "Finding My Religion" series.