Robyn Backen. Juried Artist
Constellations
WebXR on the Styly platform
Artist Statement
‘On the Precipice of Forgetting’ brings together two bodies of work. First is my long-term research project into acoustic architecture, specifically whispering architecture, alongside a concern for why we forget and how the balance between episodic and procedural memory teeters on the edge. Navigating the instability, distortion, and gaps in our recollections and memory structures challenges understanding memory and cognition. This artwork delves into the intricacies of human thought processes and broken communications.
It is located at the top of the Whispering Wall, Reservoir Dam, SA, and within the small hut at the base of the giant concrete parabola, which holds back the voluminous water. Within the hut is a discrete video work with the voices of three women in conversation. One gently directs, offering a pathway for the fading episodic memories of the other two, who drift in and out of broken, fanciful remembering. On the top edge of the wall, another conversation occurs between two females on the precipice. The conversation has been interpreted by an AI generator, creating a new language that is at once foreign and surprisingly perceptible. In the state of forgetting, broken fragments subside into a new zone of understanding.
Thank you to Ian Hobbs and John Tonkin for their support while learning about creating and inhabiting a Virtual space.
Styly link: On the Precipice of Forgetting
About the artists
Robyn Backen is a Senior Lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, and an artist working across disciplines to create artworks that generate collaborative engagement with communication technologies, science, and philosophy. She has shown extensively in national and international exhibitions and has completed many large public commissions. Robyn has a history of awarded residencies worldwide, most recently in Rejmyre, Sweden, and Beijing, China.
Over the past two decades, her artworks have evolved from a deep intrigue into communication and telephonic systems. Drawing upon research into technology and materials, investigating patterns and systems within her practice, like language, nature, and remembering. Her body of work is not bound by medium or scale, with large public commissions contrasting against smaller sound and light works. Recent works have evolved from research into message exchange patterns (MEP), broader notions of sending and receiving, sound wave patterns, and sound within parabolic forms. Her practice is a multi-faceted conversation between space, context, and audience. The site provides the structural and associative framework for formal and conceptual elements, whether gallery, digital landscape or building.
Credits: Robyn Backen