01Nightingale, 2006Installation view: 3 synchronised back projection animations and acrylic sheet, 9.0 x 1.2 x 0.4m
Image by Christian Capurro
Digital animation back projection, incorporating digital photography and video of Shinjuku, Odiaba, Shiodome, Roppongi and Ginza in Tokyo; stills from the films Bladerunner, 2001, Close Encounters, Godzilla, and Metropolis; as well as sound from the film Star Wars and web-derived nature sound effects
02Nightingale, 2006(overview of digital composition)
03Hanami 2006, Digital print, found objects and acrylic light box, 1.2 x 0.3 x 0.1m
Image by Christian Capurro
Traditional Japanese ukiyo-e (‘Floating World’) style digital animation for projection onto back-illuminated digital print, incorporating automatically combined panoramic digital photography of Tokyo, found objects and digital sound
04HKG AGP BGO HMO, 2005 Digital print & lightbox, 2 x 0.9 x 0.2m
Back illuminated digital vinyl print on acrylic, incorporating found (web-derived) imagery of Hong Kong, Malaga, Bergen and Hermosillo
05Natural Wonder, 2007Digital print on acrylic, 2.5 x 1.3m
Back illuminated digital print on acrylic, incorporating original digital photographs collected by the artist in Italy and Japan
06Rhapsodia, 2007(overview of digital composition)
07Rhapsodia, 2007Digital print & lightbox, mirrored acrylic, 4.9 x 4.2 x 0.6m
Image by Christian Capurro
Back illuminated digital print, incorporating found and original digital photographs collected by the artist in Germany, Italy and Japan. Site specific installation, supported by the Australia Council.
08Natural Disaster, 2008 Mirrored acrylic, MDF, timber, digital projection (8’06”)
Image by Christian Capurro
All the video footage presented in this work is open source archive material freely available on the internet. The sequences were filmed by onlookers of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami disaster in Koh Lanta, Phuket and Penang, Thailand, and in Sri Lanka.
The work aims to explore our complicated relationship with the natural world and the way both nature and disaster are represented in contemporary culture. In an age of increasingly impending environmental disaster and attendant media attention, nature is both paradise and nightmare, source of desire and fear, ideal and horror. These conditions of nature – as well as disaster – are constructed as ‘spectacle’ through the visual media of our current time; such that they are more often comprehended as events that are constructed through advertising, the media, film and television, than as realities. The consequences of operating only at this level of synthesised nature and disaster, which avoids engagement with their actuality, could have a potentially severe impact on both our understanding of the environment and our responses to humanitarian crises.
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10Natural Disaster, 2008 Mirrored acrylic, MDF, timber, digital projection (8’06”)
Image by Christian Capurro
(Detail) 01Nightingale, 2006
Installation view: 3 synchronised back projection animations and acrylic sheet, 9.0 x 1.2 x 0.4m
Image by Christian Capurro
Digital animation back projection, incorporating digital photography and video of Shinjuku, Odiaba, Shiodome, Roppongi and Ginza in Tokyo; stills from the films Bladerunner, 2001, Close Encounters, Godzilla, and Metropolis; as well as sound from the film Star Wars and web-derived nature sound effects
Kit Wise Biography