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
The Symphony Series is part audio/video installation, part vocal manipulation, part crowd-sourced conversation.
This suite of one-person audio-visual experiences has been presented at locations across Melbourne. 'Sky Symphony', at La Mama HQ (2023), is a meditation on the sky as inspiration for an experience of restful reflection in a busy city landscape. 'Sea Symphony', at Theatre Works (2024) celebrates the sea as a place of joy but also fear for some, as a home for creatures, as a place of safe harbour or stormy wildness, as harbinger of climate change, and as a great body of salt water that stretches around the earth and which connects us all. 'Sea Symphony' was commissioned by the Rawcus ensemble and supported by a grant from the City of Port Phillip.
CONCEPT
Kate Hunter and Rea Dennis
FABRICATION AND TECHNICAL DESIGN
Jem Savage
AUDIO RECORDINGS
Rea Dennis and Kate Hunter
SOUND DESIGN
Kate Hunter
VOICED BY
Jane Bartier, Rea Dennis, Kate Hunter, Magda Miranda, Jem Murphy, Morgan Rose, and members of the Rawcus ensemble.
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.
