Art

White Noise at ACMI.
Lucy Guerin - Love Me

It was only the second time in my life that I found myself drunk, about this time fourteen years ago. Funnily enough, I had vowed earlier on that night that I would never drink again and, finding myself barely able to walk a straight line, I had inadvertently set up a pattern that would continue to this day. Some time during that night I found myself in front of the host’s Commodore 64, programming an undulating pattern of vertically scrolling horizontal lines that proved to be endlessly fascinating to the drunken teens at the party. I’m reminded of this fourteen years later, minus the teen spirit, face-to-face with a similar pattern but only this time projected on a wall in the darkened confines of ACMI at Federation Square for the White Noise exhibition. It was Ulf Langheinrich’s Drift.

Stark, mathematical, monochromatic and laser-precise, the exhibition reminded me of the pre-XGA days of home computer graphics, before the multi-million polygon reality of today’s first-person perspective games, where the state-of-the-art was Elite: linear, monochrome wireframe 3D models. Except for maybe Keiko Kimoto’s Imaginary Numbers in all its dynamic fractilian glory. And also Ernest Edmonds and Mark Fell’s Absolute_5, an interactive and rule-based aural and visual projection of sounds and colours. Even the exhibition space reflected this idea, the separate works are delineated by a single blue line along the sides and ceiling of the entrance to each section of the gallery. These entrances are aligned so that from the start of the exhibition the blue lines form a wireframe tunnel all the way to the back of the gallery, a striking sight. In Ryoji Ikeda’s data.spectra, lines of tiny numbers scrolling across the wall create a linear flowing stream with a sense of an underlying digital code. Langheinrich aforementioned work projects long horizontal lines that continually varied in thickness, scrolling up and down the wall, a mesmerizing and hypnotic display.

The latter two works were particularly notable for me for the way the viewer interacted with them, even though these works are essentially not interactive. The movement in these works is plain, linear, and not exceedingly complex. However, in a darkened box and being the only source of light I found it interesting in a choreographic sense to watch the silhouette of the other people in the viewing space, the visual effect of the contrasting movement of the bodies. I have touched on this through choreographic works that I’ve done that have employed projections, I do tend to be drawn to this kind of aesthetic. So, while watching Lucy Guerin’s latest three-piece program Love Me at The Malthouse Theatre, I was particularly excited to see her use this kind of *look* in the projections for her work On. I found this work to be the most interesting in the program that also consisted of the already-seen Melt and the twee and mainly inconsequential Reservoir of Giving.

In On, Kristie McCracken and Byron Perry are fluid, articulate and work extremely well together. Along with the projection of lines, scrolling numbers and graphical axes, there is a sense that the relationship being portrayed by McCracken and Perry is one where the protagonists are constantly measuring each other up, having a mechanical response to their partnership, where they quite literally push each other’s buttons. The rectangular boxes of light confine their relationship, categorizing them, individually and as a couple. And with a constant use of limbic movement derived from articulations from the shoulders and hips, producing lengthened lines and tight and expansive arcs, even the physical movement conveys a sense of the mechanical. An interesting scene occurs where a large rectangular projected box lights the dancers’ legs, showing a sort of tango as the dancers try to fit their legs between their partners, a kind of dance that occurs when a couple perform when in a close embrace. Do you stand with your legs kind of interleaved with your partner’s, or both your legs between your partner’s, and who decides who is *inside* the other, how are these decisions made?

Exhibitions like White Noise are interesting to me mainly because they explore the sense of sight in such a deliberate way, especially with the constant use of high contrast, the white shapes on a black background. They trick the eye into seeing shapes and forms that are not there, and the effect is deliberate and measured. I also find it interesting to see these effects used in dance in a more human, personal, less mechanical, abstracted way.

Tags: ACMI, Visual Art, Federation Square,
Dance, Lucy Guerin.