Out of Sight: Proof (2014)

Articulate Project Space, 497 Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt, NSW, Australia

August 28 - September 14, 2014
Selection of images reproduced in VLAK 5: Contemporary Poetics & the Arts, Prague, 2015 ISBN 1804 512X

Returning to Australia after a few years living away, trying to figure out what's going on. Each day, for a year, I wore a small automated camera, randomly capturing the nothingness of just walking around, in a place where I was free to move, unrestricted by forcible detention, exercising basic freedom and feeling the force of that liberty. Each day, one image was selected from the daily flow, captioned and shared on Facebook. This exhibition gathered the first three months of these images, arranged in weekly scrolls.

The automatic images, made by a device attached to a moving 'body-tripod' measure the perimeters of perception, with sensors tracking time and location - a kind of loose psychogeographic mapping. Sometimes it misfired, creating unpredictable abstract images and colour shifts of data trying to become an image. The device (the Swedish-designed, Taiwan-manufactured Narrative Clip - no longer in production) geotags and timecode the images when they are uploaded to a server, so they can be viewed on a mobile device. The randomly-composed images present a 'machinic aesthetic', an 'accidental artistic' way of seeing. My interest is not so much in carrying out a process of 'sousveillance'; nor am I so interested in learning more about myself, revealing my daily patterns (the logic of the 'quantified self' - too much for comfort is already known about this creature). I'm interested in the reverse: the world looking back at us and what it sees. And I like the ephemeral nature of the device itself ...

Day 6, Saturday May 24 – In the art village

Day 41, Saturday June 28 – Gran Via with Carlos and Riie

Day 44, Tuesday July 1 – In the communist cafe (July days)

Day 89, Friday August 15 – Public Art Gallery

Day 110, Friday September 5 – Random visual field split machinic incident

Day 147, Sunday October 12 – Page turner

Day 159, Friday October 24 – Blue-red swirl

Day 162, Monday October 27 – In the Japanese village

Day 216, Saturday December 20 – You'll always find me in kitchens at parties

Day 280, Sunday February 2 – On the way to the cinema

Day 297, Wednesday March 11 – Looking for the best places to hide

Day 316, Monday March 30 – All harried, they fetter themselves in robes

Day 335, Saturday April 18 - Photo historians and curators in search of a drink

Day 174, Saturday Never 8 – On and on each day

'Sadly, the stars of what is possible shine only at night. Sooner or later the everyday must dawn and the suns rise to their zenith (including the black sun of empty anguish). Until such time as humankind has transformed this light and this darkness, stars will only shine at night.' (Lefebvre)