“A Portrait of Bradbury in Gamer Space” presented by D
Image 1: Documentation image. “The Lair.” Alaska Projects, Sydney; Image 2: 3D rendering of installation space. “The Lair,” Screen Capture
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Game Art
Presentation Title:
- A Portrait of Bradbury in Gamer Space
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Abstract
A Portrait of Bradbury in Gamer Space is part of an evolving series of installation and interactive portrait works that seek to address and heighten the broader disconnects we have in our current era as interactive 3D, gaming and communication technologies begin to confuse the line between education and entertainment, solitude and isolation, reality and play, skill and ineptitude. This presentation will explore the various (and conflated) thematic/technical aspects of my most recently exhibited work. The work being an interactive video art game portrait of Garry Bradbury, an iconic and pioneering figure in the history of Australian electronic/ experimental music and former member of the seminal electronic post-punk outfit Severed Heads.Thematic Statement
The concerns of this particular work are layered within the context of installation, interactivity, “gamification,” simulation, documentary, video, history and portraiture. Being a work that occupies such a wide plethora of artistic modes, it is natural that the ideas presented within this work occasionally operate in a conflated manner. Bradbury is an iconic and pioneering figure in the history of Australian electronic and experimental music. Having been a member of the seminal electronic post-punk outfit Severed Heads, he is a unique personality that reflects an important period in Australia’s musical and avant-garde heritage. Bradbury’s practice has covered a vast amount of ground in terms of musical experimentation and performance and he is an influential figure in shaping the ideas and identity of experimental Australian music. Working from the sub-cultural mores of the post-punk and industrial movements that existed between the 1970’s and 1980’s, where skill in the context of musicality was of little value compared to the effect of industrial sounds (where the “ultimate end of the industrial object is failure”), [1] this particular portrait and installation seeks to explore and expose similar junctures that exist within the realm of simulacrum, portraiture, biography, digital decay, isolation and addiction.Whilst assessing the politics and aesthetics of a connected digital age, one can witness the rise of similar concerns that were shared in part by Bradbury’s post-punk generation. This is the concern that humans were/are becoming increasingly disconnected from their natural/ immediate surrounds through a subservience to unthinking technologies and processes. However, where noise and experimentations with electronic audio were used in order to challenge and amplify the more discordant aspects of the Bradbury’s own era, A Portrait of Bradbury in Gamer Space seeks to address and heighten the broader disconnects we have in our current era as interactive 3D technologies begin to confuse the line between education and entertainment, solitude and isolation, reality and play. As we have moved beyond the age of mechanical reproduction into that of digital simulation, it is likely that these lines will become increasingly blurred. (timothyd.com/bradbury.php)
