Panel Statement

Storytelling with images may be our first record of narratives, such as sand drawings and rock carvings in the western desert tradition through to interactive meta‑narratives being produced today. meta‑narratives, the exhibition, will present works by artists who re‑interpret the manner in which stories are told. The artists are presenting large tales and small relying on the specifics of the locations from which the stories are sourced. The stories are site‑specific (the moon, a small town off the coast of South Eastern Australia, Arnhem Land). meta‑narratives presents contemporary, frequently interrupted, reception of texts and histories as explored by artists who find new modes of presenting our stories back to us. The oldest work (requiring to be sourced as loans) will be an animation of a bark painting depicting the journey between two islands in the north of Australia. The audio and video recordings formed part of Little Painting, Big Stories: Gossip Songs of Western Arnhem Land exhibition at the University of Western Australia. meta‑narratives includes works like the Book of Luna which is an interactive cabinet of curiosities collecting differing perspectives and responses to our view of the moon. Penumbra uses a hybrid art/literature application in development for tablet media. It expands ‘ebook’ conventions by carefully integrating video, illustration and fiction. Law of the Tongue (Helyer) presents a tale of the only documented example of inter‑species collaboration. A key consideration in selecting the works is that they have a highly resolved visual aesthetic approach to their content. They are poetic in their visualization and audio portraiture of stories and histories. They are all exemplary in the finely crafted use of electronic and digital arts and are highly sophisticated in the way the stories have been resolved for audience engagement and to stimulate the curious.

With Lauren Fenton & Bronia Iwanczak

• Cecelia Cmielewski, AU, produces artworks where social, technological and cultural engagements intersect to encourage new understanding across knowledge systems. She realises these artworks as an artist, curator and manager. She holds an MBA (University of Adelaide), Bachelor of Design (University of South Australia) and a Bachelor of Arts (Flinders University).
• Clea T. Waite, US, is a research artist scholar and experimental filmmaker whose motion pictures balance unconventional aesthetic exploration with innovative realisation. Her somatic, cinematic works explore immersion, stereoscopic imaging, spatial montage and unique interfaces, as well as one inter‑species collaboration with several hundred spiders. Waite graduated from the MIT Media Lab as a physicist and computer graphics developer. She was founding Associate Professor of Digital Montage at the Academy of Film and Television Babelsberg, Germany and has held positions at the Pratt Institute, New York and the University of Arts, Berlin. She is now pursuing her PhD at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Media Arts and Practice.

Full text (PDF) p. 127-130