A discussion with artists Leon Cmielewski and Josephine Starrs, chaired by project curators Cecelia Cmielewski and Ross Gibson, followed by a live interactive media event showcasing Australian and South Korean digital art on the Fed Square big screen.

Where: Peter McMahon Room, Federation Square (map attached)
When:  7-7.45pm, Friday August 7 (broadcast to commence at 8pm in the Square)

Free

As seating is limited please RSVP to Meredith Martin: martinma@unimelb.edu.au

This panel discussion will introduce the live screen to screen launch of the cultural precinct of 'Tomorrow City' in South Korea, a new urban development at Incheon. Including digital and interactive works from Australia and South Korea, this will be the pilot event in a series of live interactive  broadcasts between Fed Square in Melbourne and Art Center Nabi in South Korea.

Leon Cmielewski and Josephine Starrs will discuss their interactive, ‘sms_origins’ , a public sms graffiti board, which will be presented at the launch.

This interactive screen event is part of a five year project 'Large Screens and the Transnational Public Sphere', a pioneering study of the potential of large video screens to build community  across nations through artistic exchange and public participation. The project is a collaboration between Art Center Nabi in Seoul, Fed Square PL, the Australia Council for the Arts, the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney, supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Projects scheme.

We invite you to be part of this experimental cultural event by participating in the discussion and joining us in the Square for the live broadcast.

Leon Cmielewski and Josephine Starrs are Australian media artists whose long-term collaboration has produced a variety of screen-based installations. Their art practice focuses primarily on the relationship between society, the machine and the individual, often using play as a strategy for engaging with the social and political contradictions inherent in contemporary life. Starrs and Cmielewski’s current media artworks are situated at the juncture of cinema, information visualisation and data mapping, playing off the tensions between the large and small screen, and between information and sublime landscape.

Their latest works include Land[sound]scape a video and interactive sound installation created for the third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China in 2008. The work features panoramic images of the “Walls of China” at Lake Mungo in outback Australia projected onto a suspended screen. The viewer’s movement around the installation space is tracked by sensors and an ambient spatial audio soundscape responds to this audience movement.

Their past public media art installations include Seeker, winner of an Award of Distinction in Interactive Art at Ars Electronica 2007, and Floating Territories, an installation combining distributed printed cards, swipe card reader and mini computer games created for the International Symposium of Electronic Art in Finland, ISEA2004.

Their work has been exhibited in Australia, Europe, Asia, Canada and North & South America.

Starrs is Chair of Film and Digital Art at Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University and Cmielewski lectures at the School of Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney.

Cecelia Cmielewski is the Manager, Cultural Engagement Initiatives, Community Partnerships, Australia Council for the Arts.

Ross Gibson is the Professor of Contemporary Arts, Sydney College of the Arts.