If the forest wanders… 2016

An interactive projection mapping of the underside of a train bridge, that uses hand-drawn imagery of bio-luminescent sea-creatures and fungi, for Brisbane City Council’s Friday Night Laneways ‘Organic Data’ exhibition/festival. This festival sat in conjunction with the World Science Festival, on in Brisbane at the time.

My original idea was to make a ‘wandering forest’, and interactive forest that followed people up and down the laneway from above, however technical issues changed my backdrop from a scrim to a train bridge running over the laneway, so I figured this was a great opportunity to use the train bridge itself to create something very site-specific. The work ended up revolving around the central theme of the train tracks, from which I may an ‘xray view’ of the tracks above. My wandering forest of bio-luminescence grew up over these tracks, and each time a train came through, they would be blown away, only to regrow with time.

The work was interactive in a number of ways. I created a control box from which the audience could control a steam train that came through the tracks, as well as setting off a separate animation of growing fungi that overtook the entire area. The control box sat beside the (closed off) street, next to illuminated seating for people to sit down and look up at my artwork. As it is a working train bridge, actual trains came by very often, at which point a separate train animation would run in time with the overhead train. This separate train ran on the opposite side of the tracks, making it truly look like an xray of what was happening above (whereas the train people were in control of ran such that while looking up it looked like a birds-eye-view looking down). A hidden speaker would set off sounds each time someone interacted with the work – train noises and words/ spoken sounds.