DIGITAL GARDEN
The CUBE Artist in Residence Program, QUT Brisbane, Australia
Man & Wah were the 2018 Artists in Residence at The CUBE, QUT - one of the world's largest interactive learning and display hubs for scientific and digital exploration for big questions of the 21st century. Located in QUT's Science and Engineering Centre - The CUBE consists of 48 multi-touch HD screens and multiple large scale digital projection screens, all spanning across two storeys.
For the residency Man & Wah created ‘DIGITAL GARDEN’, a body of work exploring the themes of biodiversity and cosmic existence through a series of hyper detailed large scale audio/visual projections and 22 digitally interactive works featuring plants found growing within Brisbane’s central areas. Audiences were able to interact and visually explore each plant, learning its anatomy and evolutionary functions. The content was exhibited across all display zones in The CUBE (a first for the QUT artist residency), creating a fully immersive space for audiences to explore and contemplate the themes of earth, nature, humans and the cosmos. The project also features the music of Jonn Serrie, a renowned composer of planetarium and space ambient music; further deepening the immersive experience of ‘DIGITAL GARDEN’ inside The CUBE space.
More | www.thecube.qut.edu.au
The residency gave opportunities to connect and collaborate with QUT’s extensive research disciplines - from botany, marine sciences, computer programming, VR & AR research, and robotics engineering. Man & Wah also spent extensive amount of time inside QUT’s microscopy laboratories - learning to operate and use electronic microscopes. This enabled them to capture the visual dimensions of plant invisible to the human eye, recording an extraordinary universe of patterns, textures and colours.
Read more about the plant microscopy here.
Man & Wah was also invited to give a series of artist talks for QUT’s STEAM Experience Day, as a part of QUT’s Widening Participation Program that “supports under-represented youth groups from low socio-economic, rural areas and Indigenous students; to increase enrolments from students who may not feel they have the opportunity to study at universities.” Man & Wah spoke about their experiences during The CUBE residency, emphasising on the values of creativity, the imagination and nature.
The above 3 clips were produced as a part of promoting DIGITAL GARDENS.
