The Constellations

Fertilizer, sediment, and pesticide run-off from sugar cane farming are among the major causes of degradation to the Great Barrier Reef. Between 2015 and 2019, artists Lucas Ihlein and Kim Williams have been collaborating with local farmer Simon Mattsson to explore tactics for grass-roots cultural change to support regenerative farming practices within the cane farming community of Mackay, Queensland. In the final episode of the DLUX Constellations Podcast we hear about this innovative project that bridges the gap between land art, creative practice, contemporary commercial agriculture and community.

This episode we’re talking with Cat Jones about her project Somatic Drifts, a one on one sensory experience exploring empathy and transgression. Somatic Drifts enables participants to experience the body of another entity through touch and illusion. What realm does the human exist within? How far can we drift? What can this drift enable us to change? During the project Jones worked with neuroscientists specializing in brain plasticity and chronic pain. The team recently published a new study that came about as a result of her findings.

Joining her to talk about the crossovers of this project with vegetal philosophy and her own research in plant intelligence, will be evolutionary biologist, Dr Monica Gagliano, who Jones spent time with towards the beginning of the project.

Sound Ship (Descender 1) is a custom-built spacecraft designed to drop a sound from the edge of space, 33,722 metres into the stratosphere, with a payload of aeolian harps, tracking devices and recording equipment designed to capture both audio and moving image.

Its creators, David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, are our guests on this episode of The Constellations, talking about their work that incorporates sound art, performance, science, photography, computer game technology and more.

Computers and machines are full of knowledge and information... but can they be intelligent?

‘Intelligence’ describes the brain’s ability to reason, learn, plan, deploy abstract reasoning, experience emotions and exercise self-awareness. Artist and researcher Mari Velonaki creates poetic human-machine interfaces exist within a broad field of AI research pursuing the creation of truly intelligent non-human objects.

This episode we do a deep dive into the senses and talk to the artist/scientist team behind Osmic Resonance, an audio-olfactory project that sought to harness sympathetic vibrations between sounds and aromas. The work tapped into a phenomenon of sensory cross-over — how does smell effect our perceptions of sound? Working closely with the cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Anina Rich and her work on synaesthesia, artist Jo Burzynska created a multi-sensory chamber in which the aesthetic, scientific and therapeutic potential of sensory interactions were explored and experienced through intensifying and shifting, entwined sound-and aroma-scapes.

This episode, we sit down with the artists behind the project: Oratorio for a Million Souls. Collaborating with thousands of bees, this large scale project created three ‘green' architectural structures, in the form of traditional bee ‘skeps’ in botanical gardens in Buitenpost (Fryslan) and Oldenburg and Emden (Germany). To generate empathy with the dire state of bees in the face of commercial farming, pesticides and global warming, these three ‘Oratorios’ contain Bumble Bee nests equipped with audio and data sensors that create a multi-channel realtime ‘opera’ audiences could participate in.

Exploring the aesthetics of data and technology, Clanger pairs statistical tracking data of AFL player performance with the emotional intensities of the crowd to create 3D virtual artworks.

This Episode, we talk with artist Helen Pynor about her project, ‘The End is a Distant Memory’. Working with cells from supermarket bought chicken breast, Pynor’s work explores the philosophically and experientially ambiguous zones, of the life-death boundary and organ transplantation. Her practice draws on her dual backgrounds in the biological sciences and the visual arts to engage directly with the materiality of human and non-human bodies using the mediums of photography, sculpture, video and installation. We are also joined by scientist and collaborator on the project, Dr. Jochen Rink, from The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden.

This week we're joined with the artists behind "Open Air". A visual experience set to the 2013 album "Open" by Australian cult band The Necks. It is also a form of creative earth imaging; it combines timelapse Landsat satellite imagery of Australia, with motion-controlled aerial photography of the paintings and processes of Australian painter Emma Walker. Together, these two vastly different forms of aerial earth imaging combine to produce a complex picture of a changing planet.

Episode #3 of ‘The Constellations’ series, we talk to the artists and astronomer behind a smart phone app that turns the stars into live music. Available anywhere on earth, this app allows you to 'hear' the stars as they rise and set over the horizon in front of you.

Created by artist Michaela Gleave, composer Amanda Cole and programmer Warren Armstrong, A Galaxy of Suns connects audiences with the unseen motions of our galaxy, through the intimacy of an app, and the large scale spectacle of choral performance.