30 Words for the City was an interactive media project I produced in the early 1990s. It explored the relationship between subjectivity and mass mediated environments, and was set in an imaginary city that was a mixture of Sydney and Tokyo.
The project was undertaken over about 18 months, utilizing a database of around 2000 photographs, location audio and moving image sequences. It was scripted in Director and made extensive use of Photoshop and version one of After Effects.
Between the prescriptive forms of emergent “interactivity” and the potentialities of a given text, 30 Words was intended as an incomplete artifact that favored trace over text, layering and flux as its native mode. The experience of cities is oblique and layered, always becoming – perpetual immanence.
There was a nice précis broadcast on Radio National by arts critic and writer Kevin Murray.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS//
30 Words toured internationally for a number of years as interest in interactive arts grew internationally.
The 4th International Biennale in Nagoya – ARTEC ´95, Recommendatory Prize Interactive Media Installation
Burning the Interface: International Artists’ CD ROM Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
1996 Burning the Interface: International Artists’ CD ROM Ngapartji, Adelaide
Burning the Interface: International Artists’ CD ROM, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne
Experimenta. Southbank, Melbourne
1997 Burning the Interface: International Artists’ CD ROM Perth Institute of Contemporary Art
Burning the Interface: International Artists’ CD ROM Brisbane City Hall and Gallery
1998 <Compacts>. CD ROM exhibition, École Régionale des Beaux-arts de Rennes, France
1999 Contact Zones Cornell University, Ithica New York
Contact Zones Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, Mexico
Virginia Film Festival, Charlottesville Virginia
4th Biennial of Art and Architecture, Graz Austria
International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Forum des Images, Paris.
2000 Cybercultures, Touring Exhibition, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney
Architecture Film Festival, Rotterdam
2001 Microwave, Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong
