Artist Statement

Fox & Drum’s electro-acoustic performance, enhanced by quadraphonic audio and visual synthesis, is an immersive journey into the convergence of sound and technology. Hailing from Newcastle, Australia, we blend modular synthesisers, acoustic instruments, and cutting-edge digital tools to craft a multidimensional sonic experience.

Our collaboration bridges the gap between art and science, weaving Jon Drummond’s expertise in sonification and data visualization with Huw Jones’s dynamic music production as Fox Control. Through quadraphonic sound, the spatial dynamics envelop audiences, creating an environment where music transcends traditional boundaries.

Visually, our performance integrates real-time visual synthesis, transforming sound frequencies into captivating imagery that evolves with the music. This synthesis not only enhances the auditory experience but also enriches the narrative of each composition.

Our exploration extends beyond mere performance; it’s an exploration of how technology can deepen emotional resonance and expand artistic expression. By pushing the boundaries of sonic and visual possibilities, we invite our audience to join us on a transformative sonic odyssey that challenges perceptions and inspires new connections between sound, art, and innovation.

About the artists

Fox & Drum, the dynamic electronic duo from Newcastle, Australia, blend modular synthesisers with acoustic and digital instruments to create symphonic experiences that captivate audiences worldwide.

At its core, Fox & Drum comprises Huw Jones (known as Fox Control), a sought-after music producer and musician, and Associate Professor Jon Drummond, whose pioneering research merges music with computing to enhance accessibility in scientific research. Drummond’s expertise in sound design, composition, and software engineering enables groundbreaking collaborations that unite arts and sciences, exploring the intersection of data representation through sound and digital mediums. His journey began at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, evolving through a PhD in interactive electro-acoustics, sonification, and visualization.

Meanwhile, Huw Jones’s musical trajectory skyrocketed with Fox Control’s debut electronic hit, topping Australia’s iTunes charts in 2012. His accolades include multiple awards for ‘Excellence in Sound Design’ from his contributions to theatre productions. From art installations to producing mainstream and classical music, Huw’s diverse collaborations showcase his versatility and innovation in music production.

In 2020, Huw’s debut on Dutch record label Armada marked a milestone, while his remixes as Fox Control gained prominence on national broadcaster Triple J and Spotify playlists. His passion for music technology also led him to attain a postgraduate qualification in Creative Therapy from Charles Darwin University in 2023.

Together, Fox & Drum forge a distinct musical identity, merging artistry with scientific inquiry to push the boundaries of sonic exploration and redefine electronic music’s landscape.

Credits: Jon Drummond and Huw Jones

URL: Fox & Drum

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Artist Statement

The Eternal Ephemeral is a journey through the familiar and unfamiliar where light and sound drift along like our endless, numbered days. Within these walls the virtual and the real collide, opening up a gateway to a space in-between that is mundane, yet unfamiliar. A place where the everyday and routine animate the obscure and the alien, enabling the potential of the virtual to seep into the real. This symbiosis of the real and the virtual is mutually beneficial, perhaps even necessary, facilitating the expansion of both dimensions and revealing each as unique parts of a continuous whole.

Styly link: The Eternal Ephemeral

About the artists

David Han is a media artist, scholar and educator whose work employs emerging technology to explore the boundaries between computation, cinema and immersive media. His current practice employs a structural approach to explore VR and aims to understand and expand the range of possibilities for creative practice in VR. His award-winning artwork has been exhibited internationally at ISEA (International Symposium of Electronic Art), FIVARS (Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories) and VRTO and his arts-based research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Credits: David Han/Friend Generator

URL: https://friendgenerator.club/

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Artist Statement

Fractures and Faults is a long-form piece using sounds from a natural artesian spring within the Great Artesian Basin aquifers, Australia. This composition uses field recordings from a series of hydrophones placed within the natural spring where the groundwater seeks fractures of faults and folds in the Great Artesian Basin. Hear the underground turmoil as the pressurized water forces its way through the Fracture Zone, rises to the surface, escapes the discharge vent and flows towards the wetland.

The Great Artesian Basin is a groundwater system resource that covers four states of Australia, over 1.7 million square kilometres. This groundwater system is a vital resource. Many parts of the country have surface water of limited supply or of poor quality. Agriculture, irrigation and industry account for over half the use of this groundwater. Mining and petroleum production industries located within the arid areas of Australia rely solely on groundwater and mainly use resources that are not renewable. Natural ecosystems, including native flora and fauna, depend on this groundwater, often as their only water source. The Great Artesian Basin also has cultural significance for the Aboriginal people for their Creation stories as well as vital water sources, especially in times of drought

About the artists

Vicki Hallett is a versatile musician, field recordist, sound artist, composer, music practitioner and educator. Her focus is to record, compose with, and feature the ever-diminishing habitats and species of our planet. Highlighting unique sounds from the micro to the macro, Hallett utilises sounds we rarely or cannot hear. She has composed, produced and performed in live concerts, international conferences, solo recordings and videos ranging from chamber music to exploratory work with sound art. Hallett travels the world recording nature’s sounds as well as performing in acoustically interesting environments including Mabolel Rock (South Africa) with a pod of Hippopotami and the Amazon jungle.

Credits: Vicki Hallett

URL: http://www.vickihallett.com

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Minyt’ji immersive Mapping

Artist Statement

“The land is complete. It has all that it needs for its continuation and sustenance. But it cannot express itself. It cannot sing, paint and dance its’ identity. And so, it has grown a tongue. That tongue is the Yolŋu. The Indigenous people of Australia. They exist to articulate the land. That is their reason for existence.” (Djambawa Marawili)

Key themes expressed through our artistic practice explore the universal power of connectedness. Immersive mediums employ a decolonising aesthetic of Affect that reach beyond human reason to activate complex multi-species interconnections found in Yolŋu njarra (law). At every stage of the project from development through to the exhibition installation, key Yolngu stakeholders inform the cultural appropriateness of the visual and narrative elements of the immersive artwork. The the Dhukurrurru ga Mäna AR installation will include triggers to access traditional knowledge information to deepen the immersive experience.

Dhukurrurru ga Mäna AR directly benefits a selection of The work fosters intercultural understanding as diverse audiences will access an immersive experience of Yolngu culture. This project builds on the achievements of Minytji immersive Mapping, launched at CDU gallery in 2022, generously supported by Arts NT, by developing a new, more sophisticated and considered AR installation and its documentation. Artists living in remote communities have the opportunity to reach new audiences and extend their art practice to include new digital techniques and technologies.

The main painting in this installation represents Dhalatj – the knowledge of the ancestors. It is this wisdom that travels down from Dhalinybuy as water.

The relationship of the rivers (gurrutu) is the same as the clan lands that they travel through, Yothu Yindi (mother-child). The Datiwuy Ganambarr is a mother clan to the child Wangurri clan of Dhalinybuy homeland, where the Cato River runs down to Arnhem Bay.

This Yirrtja/Dhuwa painting is about Dhukurrurru & Mäna. The upper centre section is dhukurruru (a rock at the mouth of the river that is almost always underwater where it is quite deep.), and the white anvil shape is like mud and water currents that water patterns running over the rock. The lower section is a dhuwa painting, where the Yindi (Child) river and the Yothu (Mother) river meet and merge into Arnhem Bay. This is the homeground of the shark Mäna.

Dhalatj means knowledge of the ancestors. It is this wisdom that travels down from Dhalinybuy as water. The story in the painting is about Gularri (cycad leaves, branches, bark, logs) travelling down from Dhalinybuy with the dhalatj freshwater. It is near the end of the wet season, and he is preparing for the new season by clearing the ‘badness’ away from the river. He carries it down to the saltwater to help clear up the country and the river’s soul.

About the artists

Building on 10-years of collaborative cultural activities in Yolŋu Homelands, InDigiMatha  – a Homeland Studio model developed by Goŋ Wanhurr through the formation of the Nambara Arts and Cultural Heritage Centre at Dhalinybuy – promotes educational and immersive curatorial engagements with the GLAM sector. Through the work of InDigiMatha Immersive Lab we have identified the infrastructural developments required to better equip communities (Elders, Artists, Art workers) with the requisite skills and training for curating Metaverse Mala – the transmission of immersive interactive cultural events and engagements direct from Homeland to Exhibition.

InDigiMatha is an East Arnhem Homeland community program and Industry engagement strategy that has been developed by Goŋ Wanhurr Corporation over the past decade in partnership with local, regional and national partners. Our most recent project, Miny’tji Immersive Mapping, presented at the Purrumpa Conference in Adelaide, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Australia Council’s ATSI board, and on a second exhibition launch held at the CDU Waterfront Campus in Darwin, elicited an impressive public response.

The Darwin CDU Waterfront event was featured by NT media channel and press. The InDigiMatha Homeland Studio model and the InDigiMatha immersive Lab programs connect remote homeland communities in East Arnhem to the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum (GLAM) exhibition and event sector through the use of digital XR technologies.

The InDigiMatha Homeland Studio model runs three core programs: Elder-in-Residence, Artist-inResidence and Curator-in-Residence for the creation and co-curation of cultural digital art and immersive exhibitions for the GLAM sector.

This innovative Homeland engagement program has been developed over the past decade by East Arnhem Yolŋu Aboriginal Corporation, Goŋ Wanhurr working with local, regional and interjurisdictional partners. It builds on successful national and international engagements through the presentation of our unique immersive AR and VR content. From a community perspective the initiative’s main objective is to promote sustainable outcomes through the intergenerational engagement transmission and preservation of cultural knowledge, and the production of digital art and cultural content within and between communities.

Credits: Tommy Riyakurray Munyarryun, Djambawa Marawili, Kevin Lucas

URL: indigimatha.com

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Dr Claire Tracey.
Constellations

Artist Statement

Welcome to the Plasticene, a new geological age defined by the pervasive presence of plastic. “Strange Bloom” explores the profound impact of this material on our planet, creating a visual and auditory landscape that reflects our current environmental crisis. This installation features a jungle of plastic, composed of both new single-use plastics and upcycled waste materials, symbolising our entanglement with this enduring substance.

Using kinetic sculptures and soundscapes generated through field recordings and AI synthesis, I aim to evoke a sense of urgency and contemplation. The movement and sounds within the installation draw parallels to the natural world, contrasted with the synthetic, highlighting the tension between human activity and environmental stewardship.

Through “Strange Bloom,” viewers are invited to consider their role in the Age of Plastics and the responsibility we hold as stewards of our environment. By reimagining waste as art, the installation seeks to inspire a deeper connection to the planet and a commitment to sustainable practices.

About the artists

Claire Tracey is an artist and environmental researcher committed to creating impactful public art and promoting eco-centric design. Her research investigates how public art can reduce plastic waste in urban environments, blending creativity with sustainability. Claire’s work explores the devastating effects of plastic on global ecosystems, using dynamic sculptures to provoke reflection on consumption, design, and ecological responsibility.

Claire transforms discarded materials into thought-provoking art, aiming to redefine and revalue waste. She is passionate about fostering a deeper connection between people and the environment, encouraging communities to engage with ecological issues through interactive and participatory public artworks.

Claire teaches at the University of the Sunshine Coast, where she shares her passion for environmental art with her students, inspiring them to think creatively about sustainability and critically about consumption, design, and ecological responsibility. Her work, recognised with awards like the Museums and Galleries National Award for Sustainability, has been featured in exhibitions worldwide.

Credits: Claire Tracey

URL: clairetracey.com

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Tiare Ribeaux + Qianqian Ye. Juried Artist
Constellations

Artist Statement

Kai-Hai: 塑 Plastia is a video installation (stills above) that explores The Great Pacific Garbage Patch which contains approximately 80,000 tons of plastic over a 1.6 million-square-kilometer region of ocean linking East Asia to Hawai‘i. Linking these geographies and the deities they have worshiped – from Mazu, goddess of seafarers lost in the ocean; to Haumea, who birthed the Hawaiian islands and is continuously reborn in her offspring – this new work in Kai 海 Hai realizes a Goddexx formed from the need to remediate microplastics from the ocean. She continually gives birth to new children and is reborn each time within them, in order to restore the ocean to its natural state. As plastics threaten our ocean health and all species in the ocean, Plastia is a response to cleansing our ancestral waters, rebirthing new elements of renewal, delivering a new lineage of creation to heal our oceans.

Kai 海 Hai (a hybrid of ‘Ocean’ in ʻŌlelo Hawai’i and Mandarin) is an ongoing series of virtual and augmented reality installations that utilize transpacific folklore while remixing ancestral, personal, and speculative narratives from Polynesia to East Asia to explore environmental issues, indigenous and immigrant stories, and diaspora across the Pacific Ocean. In collaboration with Qianqian Ye

About the artists

Tiare Ribeaux is a Kānaka ‘Ōiwi filmmaker, artist, and creative producer based in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Her films disrupt conventional storytelling methods by employing magical realist explorations of spirituality, labor, and the environment to critique both social and ecological imbalances. Her work uses components of speculative fiction and fantasy to reimagine both our present realities and future trajectories of healing, queerness, lineage, and belonging. Ribeaux’s work traverses between the mundane and dreamworlds – creating stories around transformation and how our bodies are inextricably linked to land and water systems. She integrates immersion within community, personal/ancestral narratives, and Hawaiian cosmology into her films. Her work often combines with installation elements to create immersive and expanded media experiences. She has shown work both nationally and internationally, and has won numerous grants and awards for her artistic leadership including the Creative Capital Award, the NDN Radical Imagination Grant, the Native Lab Fellowship and Indigenous Film Fund from Sundance, among others.

Qianqian (Q) Ye (she/they) is a Chinese artist, creative technologist and educator based in Los Angeles (Gabrielino-Tongva Land). Trained as an architect, she creates digital, physical, and social spaces exploring issues around gender, immigrant, power, and technology. Their most recent collaborative project, The Future of Memory, was a recipient of the Mozilla Creative Media Award. At the Processing Foundation, Qianqian is the Lead of p5.js, an open-source art and education platform that prioritizes access and diversity in learning to code, with over 1.5 million users. She currently teaches creative coding as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at USC Media Arts + Practice and 3D Arts at Parsons School of Design. For 2022-2023, Qianqian is a Civic Media Fellow at USC Annenberg Innovation Lab.

Credits: Tiare Ribeaux + Qianqian Ye

URL: https://www.tiareribeaux.com/kai-hai

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Tiare Ribeaux, Nanea Lum, Jody Stillwater. Juried Artist
As Above, So Below

Artist Statement

Ulu (ʻŌlelo Hawai’i): “to grow, increase, spread, to protect, to rise”; Kupu: “sprout, offspring, germinate” or a “spirit or supernatural being”.

Through video that mixes parallel visual narratives, Ulu Kupu follows a performance of harvesting plants/materials from the ‘āina (land): hala which is used for weaving; wauke, which is used to create kapa or tapa, a textile; and hau which is also used as a textile or decorative fiber. This dance with the materials of the land is further expanded through the performance of a dancer, wearing the materials on their body and dancing in a wahi pana (sacred place) as well as in a grove of hau trees. The labor hula is continued in a river, where the materials are cleaned and processed. It commences almost ritualistically, as if the movements were inherited within the performers, each of whom specializes in these crafts. The actions are meant to convey an offering, and akua (elemental deities) are shown watching these actions throughout the film. The film aims to convey that all of this ike (knowledge) is in fact inherited by all Kānaka, and that all it takes is a remembering. Through the transference of ike through the medium of film, a remembrance is offered to the viewer.

About the artists

Tiare Ribeaux is a Kānaka ‘Ōiwi filmmaker, artist, and creative producer based in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Her films disrupt conventional storytelling methods by employing magical realist explorations of spirituality, labor, and the environment to critique both social and ecological imbalances. Her work uses components of speculative fiction and fantasy to reimagine both our present realities and future trajectories of healing, queerness, lineage, and belonging. Ribeaux’s work traverses between the mundane and dreamworlds – creating stories around transformation and how our bodies are inextricably linked to land and water systems. She integrates immersion within community, personal/ancestral narratives, and Hawaiian cosmology into her films. Her work often combines with installation elements to create immersive and expanded media experiences.
She has shown work both nationally and internationally, and has won numerous grants and awards for her artistic leadership including the Creative Capital Award, the NDN Radical Imagination Grant, the Native Lab Fellowship and Indigenous Film Fund from Sundance, among others.

Credits: Tiare Ribeaux, Nanea Lum, Jody Stillwater

URL: https://www.tiareribeaux.com/ulukupu

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Grayson Cooke.
Strange Weather
University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery

Artist Statement

The images shown here are derived from the “cirrus” band of the Landsat 8 satellite and show a series of cloud formations over the Great Australian Bight.

Satellite sensors are multi-spectral, recording discrete wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum in separate “bands” which are combined in different ways to highlight environmental phenomena.

In addition to bands for visible and infrared light, Landsat 8 records a single extremely narrow band in the shortwave infrared, 1.36-1.39 microns, designed solely to gather images of cirrus clouds. Cirrus are very high and very cold, and their thin wispy forms are often difficult to see and so constitute a form of noise in optical data; the cirrus band is recorded so it can be used for filtering and correcting for cloud noise.

In other words, Landsat 8 records images of cirrus clouds the world over, solely in order to remove them from the record. These stunning and dramatically lit confections of wispy clouds and towering thunderstorms are gathered for algorithmic purposes and are never meant to be seen by human eyes.

About the artists

Born in New Zealand and based in Australia, Grayson Cooke is an interdisciplinary scholar and media artist.

Grayson is an award-winning media artist whose work shows regularly in galleries and festivals around the world. Sitting at the intersection of art and science, much of his work uses satellite imaging and satellite data, as well as infrared imaging.

“Open Air”, a film made in collaboration with painter Emma Walker and the music of The Necks, won the 2020 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize. His collaboration with sound artist Mike Cooper, “Outback and Beyond”, was the winner of a “New Face” award in the 16th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2012. This work and others have been exhibited or performed at major festivals such as the WRO Media Art Biennale and the Imagine Science Film Festival in New York, and at key venues such as MONA in Hobart, the National Art Centre in Tokyo, and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.

As a scholar, he has published many articles in highly regarded media/technology journals including Leonardo, Convergence, Body and Society and Culture Machine. He writes on many topics including art/science, new media, live audio-visual performance and the archive. He holds a BA(HONS) from Victoria University of Wellington and an interdisciplinary PhD from Concordia University in Montreal

Credits: Grayson Cooke

URL: https://www.graysoncooke.com

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Libby Harward.
Strange Weather
University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery

Artist Statement

Since time immemorial, the First Nations people of Australia have held cultural responsibilities to care for and sustain the waterways of this country. Since colonisation, water systems have been over-extracted, commodified and depleted. As a Quandamooka woman, Harward sees the ancient waterways and river systems as being in grief. For her people “water is our lifeblood and we need to protect and look after it, as it looks after us.”

‘BLOODLETTNG (water-ways)’ is a self-portrait that addresses water sovereignty for Aboriginal people. Split over three channels and placed on the ground, i the video Harward appears lying in a trench surrounded by PVC plumbing and hose pipes. A domestic garden sprinkler running water is on her torso and seemingly connected through her via her mouth. The video was projected onto a bed of mangrove and tea tree swamp mud mixed with the artist’s blood and rerecorded, a statement of the artist’s deep connection to culture, Country, and its waterways.

About the artists

A descendant of the Ngugi people of Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka, Libby Harward creates artworks that break through the colonial overlay to connect with the cultural landscape, which always was and always will be here. Harward’s political practice, in a range of genres, continues this decolonising process.

Harward describes her practice as a process of simultaneously listening, calling out to, knowing and understanding Country. Harward’s art practice spans over twenty years, initially as a community, street and graffiti artist. During the past seven years, her focus has been on developing a conceptual arts practice, resulting in regular invitations to exhibit works both nationally and internationally.

Major recent works include ALREADY OCCUPIED series on Yugambeh Country (Gold Coast), and DABIL BUNG (Broken Water) with First Nations along the Bidgee and Barka (Murray-Darling River system). These works engage a continual process of re-calling, re-hearing, re-mapping, and re-contextualising, to de-colonise, cultural landscapes, utilising low and high-tech media with elements of sound, image, installation and performance, to engage with politically-charged ideas of national and international significance.

Credits: Libby Harward

URL: https://libbyharward.art/

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Ross Manning.
Strange Weather
University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery

Artist Statement

‘Matter and Matrix (Wallum Heathland)’ 2024 builds a new techno-physical landscape that mirrors the relocation process of a wallum heathland for the development of the University of the Sunshine Coast. This intricate process saw a cut and paste of the physical landscape, where each plant was GPS tracked and replanted within an accuracy of up to 10mm to its original collected ecosystem.

Recorded onsite at the new location of the wetlands, the pristine aquamarine and blue waterscapes of ‘Matter and Matrix (Wallum Heathland)’ allude to the complex falsehoods and regenerative philosophies involved in the translocation of this land segment. This new virtual yet physical landscape mirrors the high-tech recording and GPS gridding of a natural environment, both as a physical transportation of a landscape like Wallum Heathland or via the perpetual satellite mapping of the land online.

About the artists

Ross Manning lives and works in Brisbane, Australia. Known for his exploration of our ongoing relationship with technology, his primary focus is the power and agency of the electronic image, the digitisation of the natural world, and the ephemeral nature of data and machines. His work is often comprised of interactions between light, sound and physics, setting up networks of objects that operate according to their own logic.

Whilst his work addresses science and technology, it also references the legacy of minimalism, sound art and expanded cinema.

In 2017, the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane) presented a survey exhibition of Manning’s work that toured to venues across Australia between 2018-20. His work has been included in the 2016 Shanghai Biennale and the 2014 Biennale of Sydney. Manning has received major commissions from the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane, 2015), Len Lye Centre | Govett-Brewster Gallery (New Zealand, 2016), and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, South Korea, 2016).

Credits: Ross Manning

URL: https://rossmanning.com

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