WAVE

A creative collaboration between Soundstream’s Gabriella Smart (Artist Director/musician/composer), ceramicist Gerry Wedd and film/VR producer Mark Patterson and Jumpgate VR. 

Following the artistic success of “Square Circles VR” which saw the directorial debut of William Barton and Stephen King, Producer Mark Patterson brings together two South Australian cultural leaders and acclaimed practitioners Smart and Wedd to create a ground breaking new VR work.

WAVE explores notions of climate change and the destruction of our oceans and landmass through industrialisation and where an ever-present wave is ready to engulf and wipe the land clean. Although the underlying ecological concerns in the work are troubling, the tone is more positively utopian; where nature could heal itself and triumph.

Inspired by the environment we live in, Smart, Wedd and Patterson reside and create on the Fleurieu Peninsula and are actively concerned with how climate change, and human intervention are threatening the environment.

Smart and Wedd will create a narrative around human interaction with the ocean and its bordering land.  Wedd will create a major ceramic work (urn) subverting the tradition of cobalt blue willow pattern, and the iconic Hokusai wave, which will be the starting point for the VR journey. Smart will compose a multi-dimensional score using Electric Cristal, piano, electronics and voice  to create a powerful soundscape. Like “Square Circles” the power of the work will be how the image and the sound are intertwined  to the extent they become inseparable.

Within an immersive VR environment the viewer will observe the urn from the outside and see its narrative illustrations,  then travel through the object revealing a 360 degree inside/out view as if looking at the illustrations from behind. In a virtual world those narrative snapshots will come to life, drawing the viewer down through a linear narrative where short vignettes explore the theme with the ever-present ebb and flow of the ocean moving the viewer between different narrative threads. Retaining the lustrous look of glaze and the malleable tension of clay the viewer will be plunged into a wondrous world where windows will open up, and incorporate filmic elements and other objects.

For more information, visit GoPatterson Films.