Artists Statement

The key intention of Echo is to create a vehicle for the exchange of empathy. As the world becomes more complex and digitally connected, the role of empathy is becoming increasingly important as an antidote to personal loneliness and an ideological isolation. Echo is an immersive artwork that takes the form of an interactive booth-based installation. The work is user specific, relational and explores notions of connection through an interactive exchange of personal narrative. Touch screen, real-time facial tracking technology combines animation, storytelling, and portrait to highlight intersections between strangers. In doing so the installation is able to collect and share an embodied archive of cross-cultural experience that elicits compassion. Informed by narrative theorist PJ Manney: “Storytelling is both the seductive siren and the safe haven that encourages the connection with the feared “other.” How we relate to stories and storytelling can be seen as an acid-test for empathy”.     
Artist: Georgie Pinn; Producer: Kendyl Rossi
electric-puppet.com.au

• Georgie Pinn (Australia/UK) has seventeen years of experience working as an artist, director and producer of public cultural events, interactive installations, film, animation, theatre, sound composition, and education. Georgie’s creative practice is underpinned by her long-term research into empathy as a creative force for making connection across cultural, age and gender divides. Her projects have been presented in a range of public sites/events such as Federation Square, Robotronica, The Cube, Artplay, Signal, Light and Winter, WhiteNight, Hamlet at The Atheneum Theatre and the MCG Stadium. She has also been commissioned by Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne and Griffith University to design and facilitate interactive education programs using her motion capture/animation applications.
• With a portfolio of work that includes some of Melbourne’s most complex and internationally-acclaimed recent public art projects, Kendyl Rossi (Australia/Canada) is a Creative Producer with over 10 years programming art and technology for public space. Through her producing work and her artistic practice, Kendyl has hands-on experience developing projects that utilise technology to create new public encounters with art. Beyond creative development and touring strategy, her key interest lies in taking a proactive approach to curating public space by installing site-specific works in areas that are uncommonly used in exhibition display, highlighting the flexibility and importance of public space.

Supported by the Queensland University of Technology – The Cube, Australia thecube.qut.edu.au