In 1960 in South Australia, aeronautical engineers fired ten intermediate range ballistic missiles into the ‘uninhabited’ Great Sandy Desert from Woomera Rocket Range.
Part of the Blue Streak program aimed at developing Britain’s military resources into a credible nuclear deterrent threat, the rockets were loaded with inert 3000 kilotonne warheads. Fast forward to 2023, and Australians are living in a place and time in which notions of global safety have never been more unstable.
Part poem, part sound experiment, part visual art work, Near Sighted considers the ways in which the passage of time colours our perspectives of events, histories and identities. In an innovative cross-disciplinary investigation in which texts and sounds and images are composed and contained within tiny painted worlds, Near Sighted is an immersive audience experience, bringing to life myriad watercolour cutouts combined with a textured sound scape which draws from archival footage, field recordings, and personal stories to unfold the failures of the rocket program and the misgivings of those who came after.
Presented at fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne, Australia,
October 3-14, 2023.
CONCEPT, CREATION: Kate Hunter
DRAMATURG: Emilie Collyer
VOICES: Josephine Lange and Kate Hunter
FABRICATION, COMPUTER PROCESSING: Jem Savage
AUDIO MIXING: Leo Dale
IMAGES courtesy of Leo Dale
‘Sky Symphony’ is part audio/video installation, part vocal manipulation, part crowd-sourced conversation.
This one-person audio-visual experience is a meditation on the sky as inspiration for an experience of restful reflection in a busy city landscape.
A celebration of the firmament as a unique and cosmic connector of communities and community stories, it is at once local and global, present and remote, the project explores and disrupts digital storytelling to re-animate, re-engage and re-situate the ways we listen and watch.
Presented at La Mama HQ, August 2023.
CONCEPT
Kate Hunter and Rea Dennis
FABRICATION AND TECHNICAL DESIGN
Jem Savage
AUDIO RECORDINGS
Rea Dennis and Kate Hunter
VOICED BY
Jane Bartier, Rea Dennis, Kate Hunter, Magda Miranda, Jem Murphy, Morgan Rose.
IMAGES courtesy of Darren Gill
Sound_Glass_Water is a collaboration between Kate Hunter, glassmaker Lienors Torre and animator Rose Woodcock.
The project is a response to the recent discovery of water on the Moon in a mysterious form of ‘glass’, thought to have formed when meteorites impacted the lunar surface in which the water is suspended.
The project draws attention to the sonic, resonant, physical and refractive properties of glass and its fundamental importance for microscopy and telescopy.
The artists work with elements and objects: string, lights, copper, stainless steel, muslin, and a range of ready-made and found glass vessels and fragments.
The artists are all Research Fellows at Deakin Motion Lab.
Wine glasses, champagne glasses, old bottles and small medicine vessels are suspended with string.
Small filament baskets are wired to fragile glass fragments to create satellite attachments to the suspended wine glasses.
Other satellites are wired together.
Rose’s glass fragments, gathered from Merri Creek, are also used for sounding and resonance.
Light in, through and around the vessels on muslin scrim.