GrowinG Future innovators - ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative ...

Local school children create
still-life compositions to
be sent to artist Shirana
Shahbazi for use in Still
life: Coconut & other
things 2009 for ‘The 6th
Asia Pacific Triennial
of Contemporary Art’.
Photograph: Natasha Harth.
So what we have is a 1960s caravan that’s
been completely gutted and turned into
this kind of multi-sensory space. It goes
out to schools and we deliver workshops.
The caravan kind of operates almost like
a brain. If you imagine, the front of the
caravan is the face and it has its eyes
and ears. The eyes of the caravan are
two live-feed video cameras that come
in, and there are two windows. Students
can manipulate the image, with squeezy
handles. Then there are two coiled pieces
of tubing that go out with microphones
and into the surrounding environment
collecting the sound, which is brought
in to the caravan. Through the squeezy
handles, you can manipulate what you can
see and hear.
At the back, at the rear, of the caravan is
what we call the “memory”, where there
are stored images and sounds gathered at
each site by students who participate in the
workshops. So we gather this information
and it gets fed into the computers at the
back of the caravan. With our A/V techs, a
sound is matched to an image. The image
is manipulated in Photoshop so that the
tonal qualities can change. When that’s
all in place, again depending on the level
of ability of the students, they will work
with the A/V techs to see how sounds and
images get matched and how the programs
work. Through touch panels, much like
a visual mixing desk, you can pull up and
change the image and the sound. But you
really need only to have very little mobility
or motor skills.
Growing future Innovators: a scoping study 41