Convergence by Claire Brunet and Susan Frykberg
Convergence was projected onto a screen mounted on the band rotunda in Pukekura Park. Photo by Jo Tito.
About the Project for SCANZ
Convergence is an interactive night time projection artwork in which artists Claire Brunet and Susan Frykberg investigate the concept of water and its sustainability through the convergence between 3D digital objects and recording of sound of waters and electronic voices. The work explores our interaction with the natural environment through the digitalization of forms imported into a computerized spatial context and layered inside a software interface allowing visual or auditory modalities to converge. The artists’ mode of enquiry intersects art, nature, sound and technology through a dialogue between a digital medium moving forms and sound into an interactive audio video performance revealing ecological perspectives.
This project proposes new ways of looking, listening, imagining and expressing past, present and future perceptions and interactions with the world in which we live. As a result, the artwork aims to provoke an awareness of human’s impact on the state of our water and its ecology and on the ways in which our relationship with water impacts on the future condition of the natural environment.
Artist Bio
Claire Brunet. Photo by Rob Allen
Claire Brunet is a sculptor and Associate Professor in Media and installation art: Sculpture/Installation program and Fabrication Studio Bronze Casting and Digital Processes at OCAD University in Toronto. In June 2014 Brunet completed a PhD degree in Fine Arts, in the Interdisciplinary Program (INDI_SIP) at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research aims for extending spatial boundaries and explores the influence of a 3D digital and technological context on the artist’s creative process and relationship to space, time and materiality.
Brunet’s projects propose opposing temporal forces—a 3D digital and technological spatial approach as a mode of production, in opposition to a critical discourse addressing living species’ relationship to their environment.
Brunet has presented projects and papers at conferences in New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Greece and Canada. Her publications include: “Extending Spatial Boundaries Through Sculpture Practices: Exploring Natural and 3D Technological Environments” in The International Journal of the Arts in Society (Illinois: CG Publishing, 2012); Exploring Data Space, in The Faculty of Art Newsletter (OCAD U, Toronto, 2012); McLuhan and Extended Environment: Affect and Effect of a 3D Digital Medium on Sculpture Practice, in Y. Van Den Eede, J. Bauwens, J. Beyl, M. Van den Bossche, and K. Verstrynge, editors, Proceedings of ‘McLuhan’s Philosophy of Media’ – Centennial Conference, October 2011 (Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts).
Artist Bio
Susan Frykberg at SCANZ 2015
Susan Frykberg is a sound-artist/composer and poet who tries to balance chi-rho spirituality, creativity and social justice. Her works have been heard in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia and Australasia. In addition to her sound-art works, Susan composes for a variety of combinations of electroacoustics, instruments, and chant. Some of this work can be heard on her CD Astonishing Sense……….. available from www.earsay.com and itunes. One work on it, for electroacoustics and violin, was performed at the Congress for the International Alliance of Women Musicians in Beijing in 2008. Susan has combined Gregorian chant with Ableton Live in the works Salve Regina Electronica – (New Zealand Electroacoustic Symposium at Auckland University 2009) and Ubi Caritas Electronica – (9th International Festival of Women Composers in Indiana, Pennsylvania, 2010). Other notable works include Suffering, for Ableton Live, giant shadow puppets, and live signal processing, (Australasian Computer Music Conference, Auckland, 2011). In 2010-11, Susan worked with improvising musicians who played a range of instruments from classical to indigenous to electronic, in an ensemble called Let the Art Sing. They came together under Susan’s direction to create structured improvisation around high quality art. During this time she also produced a semi-regular radio show for Radio New Zealand on electroacoustic music. She currently lives in Melbourne. She is a citizen of Canada and New Zealand and has degrees in experimental music and theatre, ancient languages, and theology. She is a member of the Canadian Music Centre, The New Zealand Music Centre (SOUNZ) and Socan, and was a founding member of both The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. She teaches Acoustic Communication online for Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her music is available from earsay.com, itunes and the New Zealand Music Centre Sounz. Her most recent work is with Australian Artist Matthew Sleeth on his Drone Opera . She has also recently completed a Sound-Art commission for the Sarjeant Art Gallery called Te Ao Mata Kite 1 about the 1995 Pakaitore Occupation.
