The Return, curated by Stevie S. Han. Dark Mofo 2018

materials: ice, underwater lights, microphones, pic-up microphone, cinegel film

Photo credits: Peter Mathew

phase transition formed part of the exhibition The Return for Dark Mofo 2018. The exhibition was located in the Hobart Penitentiary, built in 1830, an edifice serving as a chapel, jail & court for male convicts, with an execution yard & gallows.  Phase Transition presented an experience of time as increment, duration and lag, with two distinct components which book-ended the exhibition, physically, through passage, and through sonic, visual, and material experience.

Viewers encountered the work upon entry into the exhibition, through the amplification of the original clock mechanism, located directly above the space (in the clock tower), filling existing display cabinets in the entrance foyer. At the exit of the exhibition, outside in the exercise yard, viewers encountered two large blocks of ice, which were scaled-up ice versions of the display cabinets. Frozen within each ice block were microphones and an underwater light.

Each light emitted a phased pulse that visually represented the beginning and end of the clock’s tick. The microphones captured the sound of the ice melt, which was amplified in the entrance component of the work, creating a stratum of sound with the amplified clock mechanism.

The components of the work book-end the exhibition, extending temporal and ephemeral approaches to consider the at once fleeting and enduring cycles of disintegration and transition.

Acknowledgements:

Jon Smeathers sound design; Jason James lighting design.

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