Author: Mike Leggett

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Interactive and Multimedia

Lecture for AGNSW Contemporary Art Course

“Imagination may be the original interactive multimedia…..” George Alexander

The imagination is a state of conciousness assumed to be possessed by the eye of the artist and compounded with the presence of an audience. But what is particular about the newer computer-based technologies that assume the audience will respond the artist’s presentation? In short, why would we be led to physically interact with the work?

The lecture will explore some recent manifestations of artists’ work and projects within the field called multimedia – on CD-ROM, on the Web, in public spaces – and the development of this genre over the last ten years in Australia and overseas. Reference will be made to exhibits in the new AGNSW show, ‘Space Odysseys: sensation and immersion’ and issues raised during the Symposium associated with the exhibition.

Work to be shown will include: anonymous, Wade Marinovsky, Phillip George, SASS, Luc Courchesne, Linda Dement, Norie Neumark, Linda Wallace, Francesca Da Rimini and Simon Biggs. .

2001
Mike Leggett

Exhibition Proposals for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image Ground Floor and Screen Gallery

Introduction – Background to this Consultancy

In August 2000 I submitted nine exhibition proposals to Ross Gibson at Cinemedia, (Platform 1.0: exhibit outline proposals) outlining in about 200 words some exhibition ideas and formats. (Appendix A); Cinemedia commissioned further research on some of these proposals.

The governing principle for gathering this material and providing advice as to its presentation lies in the urgent need, for the benefit of audience and producer alike, for the work of Australian practitioners being presented in the context of the international scene. The exchange that would ensue will encourage more Australian work to been seen overseas. The various individuals and groups who were contacted during the research period showed considerable interest in the Cinemedia project. Enthusiasm was expressed for a gallery designed for the special exhibition requirements of the newer technologies and their relationship with complementary media.

My experience as a practitioner (briefly described in Appendix B), straddles the period of the last thirty years during which time rapid changes to creative options have occurred and possibly explains my enthusiasm for utilising the cross-media options that the site at Federation Square will offer.

Contents

Introduction – Background to this Consultancy; Proposal 1: Retarded Eye; Proposal 2 : Social Software; Proposal 3 : Illuminations; Proposal 4 : PathScape; Other Proposals – some Notes; Appendices A to N (in attached folder).

2001
Mike Leggett

Playing the Parts: media art, autonomy & Country

In Hong Kong in June 1997 the British Colonial Authority “handed over” the administration of the region to the People’s Republic of China. A highly promoted and publicised international event, one of the world’s biggest commercial centres, home to eight million people, changed owners.
Many Hong Kong artists, not only those working in the media arts field, speak about the issue of identity, now that Hong Kong no longer ‘belongs’ to Britain and before the 50 years transitional period ends and full rule returns to Beijing and the Mandarin language and cultural tradition. According to Tung Kin Wah, (the CEO of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong), “Hong Kong would be more stable if there are fewer dissenting voices…” indicating that there is concern about accentuating difference between Hong Kong and China.

Dissent and difference characterise much of what is described as contemporary art in Australia. Though independence from Britain was achieved in 1901, the Queen of England remains the symbolic head of state – a referendum to change Australia’s constitution to that of a republic, will be held during 1999. Few artists or scientists comment on changes of symbolic authority. A significant number however, are actively engaged in opposing racist tendencies within an official multi-cultural society, and campaigning with the indigenous people for land rights and access to services, the articulation and realisation of this being significantly enabled using hypermedia and connectivity.

This joint paper will examine the consequences to communities of artists in Hong Kong and Australia of working within the post-colonial context and identify ways in which some of that work is actively engaged in resisting neo-colonial challenges to regional identity and autonomy.

1999
Mike Leggett and Ellen Pau

Found Sounds

Two recollections of unexpected sound performances found in unexpected locations, one a museum in Mexico City, the other in a concert hall in Exeter, England.

Published in Essays in Sound by Contemporary Sound Arts, Sydney, Australia; edited by Shaun Davies, Annemarie Jonson and Eddy Jokovich.

1992
Mike Leggett

Is It Time for a New Image? Introduction to New Media Forum

Is It Time for a New Image? was the second Forum held in Sydney in 1995 by the recently formed New Media Forum. Introduction to the forum was by Mike Leggett who introduced the four speakers: John Colette a media artist and lecturer at the College of Fine Art of the UNSW; Sally Pryor who had worked for some years with computers both as an artist and a scientist, from the University of Technology in Sydney. Darren Tofts, a lecturer in the department of literature and film at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne; and Jon McCormack, a computer animation artist and lecturer in the computer science faculty of Monash University.

The committee who organised this the second forum were: John Potts; Rebecca Cummings, Mike Leggett, Nicholas Gebhardt and Maria Stukoff. With thanks to Victoria Lynn, AGNSW for hosting and supporting the event and the AFC for providing most of the financial support.

1995
Mike Leggett

Critical Light Pathways

Critical Path is a choreographic research and development centre for dance artists in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. In September 2010, using the dichotomy of outside / inside as it relates to both body and architecture, Alan Schacher and Mike Leggett experimented with the multiplication of space and presence to generate looped choreography-image systems.The methodology alluded to historical cinema and sideshow through experimentation with camera obscura, shadows, silhouettes and auras.

2010

Mnemovie : ‘interactive montage’ engine demonstration

This 2-minute demonstration is of the ‘Sampling’ and ‘Lateral’ models made using the Mnemovie interactive engine.

Twelve 3-min mini-docs about the research in the Creativity & Cognition Studios in 2006 are sampled into a 50-second loop. By gesturing to the top of the screen, the item seen at that point is run from its head at normal speed. Gesturing to the left will run it backwards, to the right forwards; to the bottom of the screen, the titles of each movie are seen in succession each time the screen is touched. The choice is to review the work of this research group using images or words as a starting point.

In the second demonstration, using the same engine, a series of 60-sec loops of my son as he was growing up are linked laterally frame to frame: touching the top of the screen shows him older, the bottom of the screen, younger; and as before, touching the left makes the movie run in reverse.

2009
2-mins

Photofile, Sydney : Planet of Noise – Brad Miller and McKenzie Wark (DVD)

For Photofile #68

“Brad Miller and Mackenzie Wark have collaborated to produce dimensional aphorisms: “High Fidelity: the complete relationship – to love and to lie; to be loved and deceived”. At the appropriate rollover the voice reiterates: “to love and to lie; to be” as a coda of the original – until the mouse rolls off, returning some attention to the richly crafted backdrop. This is a visual backdrop with full stereophonic accompaniment, employing the full gamut of sampled and electro-synthesised loops, prepared with contributions from Jason Gee, Derek Kreckler and Brendan Palmer.

The visual backdrop over which each aphorism hovers is the digital equivalent of a medieval tapestry. These are mostly flat surfaces which have been texture value-added in Photoshop, (with some algorithmic conclusions to Mandelbrot’s work on Fractals). There are also surfaces directly re-purposed from Miller’s earlier seminal work, Digital Rhizome including the ‘infini-d worm hole’ three-dimensional forms that featured so centrally in that hypercarded piece. In an encounter with Rhizome, an early exploration of hypermedia (now called multimedia), it is soon realised that whilst the sequence is the unique result of how each interaction proceeds, the process of interacting is learnt to influence progress but not ‘control’ it. This is the case too with Planet. “

1995
Mike Leggett

Software Imaging Synthesis

Whilst artists and photographers have excelled at the adaption of tools for the purposes they need, the tools they have invented, like the camera itself, has changed the way we comprehend ourselves. In an earlier article for Photofile #60, ‘Thinking Imaging Software’, foresaw the blooming of artists building image manipulation software tools across the internet as the next stage for artists who wished to free themselves of the limitations of propriety ‘industry’ applications like Adobe Photoshop.

The article discusses related software applications and the localisation of tools of computer literacy which will contribute to the continuing development of specialized tools by artists engaged with the development of visual literacy and for the production of visual art in the digital era.

Photofile, Issue 68, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.

2002
Mike Leggett

A Fundamental Liberty?

A 1200-word catalogue essay on an exhibition of work, Dream Shelving, by the filmmaker Samuel James following a residency at Minto Mall, in the suburbs of Sydney, NSW. In a collaboration “with five Sydney based artists he created a series of short films that capture and reflect the fictional dreams of past shop-owners in Minto Mall.”

2012
Mike Leggett