Uyen Nguyen. Juried Artist
Dr Troy Innocent, Fynn Michlin, Dr Matthew Riley
Dreaming of the Sea. VENTSpace.
Artist Statement
“Yomeci Fields” at ISEA2024 Everywhen is an ephemeral sound playground that invites participation with the world through different modes of playful sonic connectivity. It features a sound-responsive ground of chalk and tape artworks that expand and contract throughout the exhibition. The sound world of “Yomeci Fields” responds to participants’ movements and interactions with each other, the ground and its play objects in an improvisational and playful collaboration. Inspired by how place is ever-created as much as it is rooted, and how play and sound can relate people to place, the work explores how play-based sonic interactivity can invite the flow of passers-by to meet together in sound, place and play.
“Yomeci Fields” brings together experimental play design, human-sound interaction design, and public art to present a festive event for the play community; however, it also eases the city’s quieter voices into play by using sound to propel, invite and encourage. It intends to make people feel ‘heard’ – their energy reflected, their movements responded to, and their voice harmonised with. It is hoped that by picking up the invitation to play, people ease into their nature and be in the current moment the way they want to be.
About the artists
Uyen Nguyen is a designer, researcher, and academic at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her work connects sound, place, play, and people. Collaborating with artists, game makers, creative producers, research partners and cultural organisations, her gallery-based and site-specific works have been shared in national and international venues, events and exhibitions including Experimenta, Tarra Warra Museum of Art, DiGRA, Freeplay and ACMI. She is a co-founder of the experimental play collective YomeciPlay and is doing a PhD at the Future Play Lab at RMIT University.
Dr Innocent is an artist game maker, urban play scholar, and creator of 64 Ways of Being, an AR art trail platform blending game design with live and public art. Based at RMIT University, his work connects digital media poetics, creative code, visual language, mixed realities and urban code. Innocent develops augmented reality games that blend physical objects with digital interfaces to reimagine everyday urban environments in playful ways within a diverse range of public spaces from Barcelona to Hong Kong. Working with the city as a material, his ‘reworlding’ practice explores ways of being that reimagine, reconfigure and reconnect with the world.
Fynn Michlin is a Melbourne based sound designer, performer and mad scientist. Living at the foot of Mt Dandenong, his art practice is an ongoing study into humankind’s relationship with nature amidst an increasingly inorganic 21st century landscape. Fynn’s unique brand of playful electronica, organic audio mangling and fluid improvisation has seen him work on award-winning interactive installations, short films, and perform on stage as part of the electronic trio Vulcara.
Dr Matthew Riley is a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University. His practice and scholarship in experimental design, art practice and critical forms of play has been recognised in exhibitions, events and conferences in Japan, United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Austria, Finland and Hong Kong. Riley’s creative practice playable art, urban play, mixed reality games and interactive experiences has been shared in venues, organisations and events including Playable City, Tarra Warra Museum of Art, ACMI, Freeplay, Monash University Museum of Art and Experimenta. With Uyen Nguyen and Max Piantoni, he is a co-founder of the experimental play design collective YomeciPlay.
Credits: Uyen Nguyen, Dr Troy Innocent, Fynn Michlin, Dr Matthew Riley