CityPILOTS

CityPILOTS

This program sees a series of eight temporary, exploratory artworks, by artists practicing in a range of different artforms, installed throughout the City of Hobart (within the actual or the digital twin of the city).

Background

In 2019 the City of Hobart's Public Art Framework was endorsed by Council. One of the new strategic directions of this project was "Experimental", with an emphasis on exploratory, temporary public artworks. A number of temporary works installed as part of Hobart Current and The Crowther Reinterpreted project showed a high level of public engagement with this type of intervention in the city. A significant grant obtained via the Federal RISE fund enabled this project to be realised.

I Raise Up My Voice

Purpose

Hobart has a talented pool of arts practitioners interested in doing works in public space, but the opportunities to build understanding, experience and a portfolio of these kinds of work are limited. CityPILOTS will offer eight artists (or small artist teams) an opportunity to explore and experiment in the spaces of Hobart, developing works that intrigue, delight and challenge city users. Artists will build capacity while drawing on the spaces, places, resources and experience of the City of Hobart. This project has the overarching aim of skilling artists to obtain further commissions in the future.

Where?

Physical works

We have defined a precinct within the City of Hobart for the physical artworks. This is based on an ease of walking distance between the works, for members of the public.

Digital works (within the City's Digital Twin)

Two of the selected artworks will be "installed" within the City's Digital Twin.

The Greater Hobart Digital Twin is a searchable, interactive, three dimensional "map" of Greater Hobart. It is like a more sophisticated version of Google's street view, as it has been being built from drone and still footage that establishes a three dimensional environment that a user can "fly" through. The Digital Twin is a data-rich environment built from many different government and private data sets. It will continue to develop over time with greater use by the general public.

Public Artwork within this digital environment will have certain parameters based on the current limits of the Digital Twin, but may also remain "in place" indefinitely as a layer within the map.

When?

Artworks will be staged/installed/performed between April and October 2022.

Selected Artists

Round 1 artists

David Campbell (Hobart)

David Campbell

Future memorials, 2045. Ten anodised aluminium panels.

Artist statement

The artwork consists of a number of discovered memorials from a possible near-future.

A full list of artwork locations can be viewed at inksniffer.net/map.

Artist bio

David Campbell is a designer, creative director and artist based in nipaluna (Hobart). He has collaborated with, worked for, or shown at Mona, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Gertrude Contemporary, the Christchurch Biennale, the Falls Festival, Citylights, and the Nextwave festival.

Future memorials

Matt Daniels (Hobart)

Matt Daniels

MID-TOWN-CLOCK, 2021. Generative digital clock, installed at The Loop, Hobart.

Artist statement

MID-TOWN-CLOCK is a new take on the idea of a civic clock. A clock that informs citizens while reflecting the local environment.

Artist bio

Matt is a Systems Designer, Digital Artist and Creative Technologist. He has a passion for new technologies, specifically how they will influence art and what new art forms will arise from them. Matt has applied himself in a range of disciplines, from computer graphics and effects to digital puppetry, animation, games, touch and motion based interfaces. He works in film, theatre and online projects as well as art performances and installations in museum galleries and festivals.

MID-TOWN-CLOCK

Margaret Woodward (Hobart) and Camilla Brueton (Cardiff)

Margaret Woodward and Camilla Brueton

moss.quarry.plaque, 2022. Digital media, sound and text installed within the City of Hobart Digital Twin.

Artist statement

moss.quarry.plaque is a digital artwork by artists Margaret Woodward based in nipaluna/Hobart and Camilla Brueton living in Cardiff, Wales. Installed in the City of Hobart's digital twin, moss.quarry.plaque is the trace of the two artist's exchanges held during three synchronous walks in their respective cities. Their unique process of call and response, locates them in their own terrain and composes a poetic score now inscribed on digital plaques in St David's Park and to be read and heard along the route of their walks.

To visit moss.quarry.plaque or to follow the artists' walking routes, please open the link below.

moss.quarry.plaque in the Digital Twin

moss.quarry.plaque sonnets(PDF, 38KB)

moss.quarry.plaque audio script(PDF, 76KB)

Artist bios

Margaret Woodward is an artist, writer and publisher and with Justy Phillips is co-founder of A Published Event. Based in lutruwita/Tasmania, Margaret's work focuses on 'divining' geological and personal histories entangled in the places we call home and her practice combines walking, writing and artmaking in response to place. Margaret's publications are held in private and institutional collections around the world.

Camilla Brueton is a visual artist and writer based in Cardiff, Wales. Her practice interrogates our experience of place; reflecting on landscape, architecture, movement and shifting perspectives. Composition and the construction of images is also a formal concern within her work; how we frame and are framed by the world around us. Camilla is a creative producer for Common Wealth, a political site-specific theatre company.

Margaret and Camilla collaborate remotely through a call and response technique of walking and writing developed during synchronous walks undertaken in lutruwita/Tasmania and Wales.

Acknowledgements

Moss.quarry.plaque is a collaboration by Margaret Woodward and Camilla Brueton. Partly made in nipaluna /Hobart and partly in Cardiff, Wales.

While we walked we remembered those whose footfall we followed; ancestors, invaders, descendants, immigrants and neighbours – ever mindful of stone, soil and moss underfoot and the memories and threads that entangle our cities' lives.

While walking on palawa country, we acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional and original owners of this land, the muwinina people, and pay respect to those that have passed before us. We acknowledge today's Tasmanian Aboriginal people who are the custodians of this land and whose land was never ceded.

In the research, production and installation of moss.quarry.plaque we wish to thank and acknowledge support from Bek Verrier, Nunami Sculthorpe-Green, Euan McAleece, and Wendy Rimon. In particular we want to thank City of Hobart staff Jude Abell, Emily Brown, Craig Garth and Robert Stevenson for your collaboration and welcoming us into in the world of the digital twin. To the Wild Ways Walking residency presented by The Museum of Loss and Renewal and the Walking Library, for facilitating our first 'pilot' for walking together.

Further reading and links to follow up

  • What3Words website with information about the What3Words geolocating system.
  • For information on how to use the What3Words app while you make your own walk: Call and response walking recipe.
  • Rod Seppelt et al, (2013) An Illustrated Catalogue of Tasmanian Mosses, Part 1, Tasmanian Herbarium, Hobart.
  • Tasmanian Plant Collection, Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.
  • Lichens and Mosses in the Howardian Local Nature Reserve in the lower Rhymney valley Penylan, Cardiff. Howardian Local Nature Reserve website.
  • Gathering Moss, A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Penguin, 2021.
  • The Building and Ornamental Stone Resources of Tasmania by C. E. Sharples Report prepared for The Tasmanian Development Authority and Tasmania Department of Resources and Energy (Division of Mines and Mineral Resources) April 1990.
  • Suzanne Smythe, (2018), Knocklofty - Hobart's Back Yard. Fullers Publishing: Hobart.
  • Cardiff's quarries
  • Radyr quarry
  • Mary Knights, Julie Gough, Tense Past (2019), Island (159). Julie Gough: Tense Past | Australian Literary Arts Magazine | ISLAND.
  • Nunami Sculthorpe-Green. takara nipaluna, 'Walking Hobart', Blak Led tours. Blak Led Tours website
  • Alan Llwyd, Cymru Ddu / Black Wales: A History: A History of Black Welsh People Paperback – 23 Mar. 2005. Welsh edition by Alan Llwyd (Author), Forward: Glenn Jordan (Author)
  • St David's Park Memorial Walls
  • Crowther Reinterpreted Project, City of Hobart.
  • Alison Alexander (2014) Tasmania's Convicts: How felons built a free society, Allen and Unwin.
  • Plotting the Rebecca Riots
  • Janine Marshall Wood (2021) No Ordinary Convict: A Welshman Named Rebecca. Forty South Publishing: Hobart.
  • Miranda Morris (1997) Placing Women Report, Hobart 1997.
  • Cascades Female Factory Historic Site
  • In Her Stride, Women's History Walk, City of Hobart, 2021.
  • Purple Plaques – commemorating remarkable women in Wales.Purple Plaques website
  • Nicola Brandt and Frances Whorrall-Campbell (Eds) (2021), Conversations Across Place: Reckoning with and Entangled World (Vol.1). The Green Box.

moss.quarry.plaque

Tom O'Hern (Hobart)

Tom O'Hern

Foreverever, 2021. Paving paint. Signage. Intercity Cycle Way, Hobart.

Artist statement

Foreverever is a scale replica of the solar system running along the bike track. The work begins at the Regatta Grounds with the Sun and runs out toward Pluto. At this scale the nearest star would be way out near the moon and would take ages to ride a bike to. The artist hopes to show just how puny we are and how we could all probably all calm down a bit.

Artist bio

Tom O'Hern is an artist based in nipaluna (Hobart). His practice is centred around drawing and includes painting, murals and animation. O'Hern is drawn to the raw mark-making of graffiti, doodles.

Foreverever

Round 2 artists

Mel McVee (Hobart)

Mel McVee

The Prediction Machine, 2022. Timber, marine ply, brass, vintage doorknobs, magnets, metal change, telephone bells, rubber stoppers, lids, paint, fixings. Installed in Mathers Place, Hobart.

Artist statement

In an age of uncertainty, this machine has all the answers. The artist was inspired by the low-tech interactivity of old penny arcade games. First, think of a question. Then, using the magnet, move the metal ball to the top of the machine. The ball will determine your answer.

Artist bio

Mel McVee is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in the realms of community art, murals, sculpture and illustration. With a Fine Arts degree in Sculpture, her interest in public art emerged through an passion in community activation projects in her local area.

The Prediction Machine

Matthew Stolp, Damian Stolp, Nicholas Stolp, Stefan Le Mottee, Matt Daniels (Hobart)

Van Ramsey's Homecoming, multi media performative work, 2022.

Van Ramsey's Homecoming is a city-wide installation and performance piece, characterised by event posters, media interviews and sightings of frontman Van Ramsey (with his glamorous entourage and ageing band) and culminating in the most sought-after open-air concert in the history of Hobart. Van Ramsey and the Dogs of Rest will be difficult to miss. As news of his arrival spreads, audiences become complicit in the generation of the mythology.

The work involves the creation of a legend; mysterious and beguiling. It toys with the notion of truth in this post-truth world and asks, what really is celebrity and who and what is real? The work deliberately plays with deception and the contrivance of reality. The artifice of reality television, social media and celebrity is rebounded and examined through art. But it is founded on an undeniable truth; Van Ramsey and the Dogs of Rest are a real band and they can really play.

Van Ramsey's Homecoming

Richie Cyngler (Hobart)

Richie Cyngler

The Nipaluna Ambient Monitoring Station, was an instalment of the CityPILOTS project for Creative Hobart.

Hobart artist Richie Cyngler activated three alleyway sites in the CBD with immersive sound works created from synthesized field recordings.

The artworks were part of an evolving fictional narrative of research being undertaken by an obscure organisation.

For more information, see the Nipaluna Ambient Monitoring Station page.

Locations

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Artist bio

Richie Cyngler is an interdisciplinary artist based in lutruwita/Tasmania. He often works with sound and experimentation to make installation and performance. His practice also incorporates public art, code, electronics, print, and sculpture. Richie is interested in exploring rhizomatic intersections of consciousness, deep ecology, posthumanism, myth, and play in his work. More info at glitchpop.com.

The Nipaluna Ambient Monitoring Station

Michael Vivarelli (Hobart)

Michael Vivarelli

Learn more about Blocky, including how to submit your ideas, on the Blocky page:

Blocky

Artist statement

Blocky is an interactive digital artwork set in the Hobart City Council's Digital Twin.

Urban environments are an ever-changing portrait that should reflect the community's social, cultural and personal needs. Through this artwork, I want to remind the people of Hobart of the power they have in shaping their city.

Blocky in the digital twin is designed to create community engagement through the use of new technologies alongside the ideas of fun and play.

Artist bio

Michael is a designer/artist born in Melbourne and raised in nipaluna (Hobart). Michael has worked in the commercial and creative industries since his graduation from the University of Tasmania's School of Fine Art where he majored in Visual Communications. Michael is passionate about exploring emerging technologies and the way that they disseminate through the community. His artworks use human emotion and humour to bring about that engagement.

Gallery