Over the weekend I went to an exhibition at Forepaw by Melbourne based artists Michael Prior & Lachlan Conn, it was really good, like the best show I have been to in a long time. I pretty much hung out in there all day, til the outside lights got dark and the rainbow animations glowed on the cardboard surfaces of the geodesic domes.
This exhibition was wonderful for many reasons
1. for creating something you could hang out in (unlike a lot of gallery shows that you shuffle around in and then leave because its made not too hold you for too long) and wanted to hang out in
2. for its beautiful design and construction
3. for the complex rythmns of sound, animation and sculpture coming together seamlessly
4. for the cubby house utopian dream
5. there were three specially made " 7" dub-plate records that contained 20 locked grooves". what this means is that instead of being cut into spirals the grooves were circles, so wherever you put the needle on the record it would loop infinately on that one sound until you changed it. And because there were 3 records (each with 10 different loops) the possibilities of sound were large and enthralling .
6. the element of chance, of parts lining up, of combinations of loops and lights and of people and animals (quite a number of dogs visited the exhibition and they definitely added another level to the proceedings.
7. the animations (moving lines and shapes) were drawn directly onto the sculptures while projector and computer were hooked up together, meaning that the animations fell only onto specific shapes on the domes and was completely site specific. this blew me away, though i guess is quite a simple idea, to draw digitally in a three dimensional space.
For more about Forepaw
