I was involved in numerous media projects for the opening of the Museum of Sydney, including the development of a feature videowall. This wall evoked imagery of Flora in the Sydney Basin before white settlement. This exhibition was very large scale and tightly integrated into the building’s site plan with a 3 x 11 aspect ratio. It was completed in 1995.
Using early versions of After Effects and component laser discs, high resolution images captured by a botanical photographer were scanned to Photo CD, and composited into a programmable moving image display of over 2400 pixels in vertical resolution.
The entire image was rendered and then set into a 9×9 source from the main image. The program was over 30 minutes in length and took over 3 months to render. Videowall programming to rendomize the display was done by Tim Gruchy.
The final work displayed was complimented with an beautiful ambient soundtrack by David Chesworth and Sonia Leber of Wax Sound Media, and displayed continuously in the Museum for a number of years. This was a very unusual work at the time, and was one of a suite of works I undertook for the Museum’s curatorial development prior to its opening.
