[-empyre-] whose "our systems"

[Christopher Domingo]

Thank you Johannes for the invite to the thread.

The Whyalla project was part of a government regional development fund to
assist the growth of the arts in remote Australia. This project wasn't
somewhat performance based, but could have had elements of performance if
the project was realised as planned. The aim was to
encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration. We had visual artists based in
Whyalla, a remote rural city in South Australia, to work with video artists
in Germany, Finland, Thailand and UK with the outlook was to produce an
installation of sculpture, audio and projections. Unfortunately, the end
product was a compromise because of the many challenges. The biggest hurtle
was the internet infrastructure in this area of Australia. At the time
ADSL1 was the type of broadband connection the artists had, which is
extremely slow compared to normal broadband and it wasn't reliable. The
international artists needed to share video and audio files with the
Whyalla participants, but the files where too large and the download would
time out. Due to time constraints, some of the artists never saw the videos
before the exhibition and had to produce their work in 'creative isolation'
to meet the deadline. As the coordinator, it was organisationally
difficult. There were language and communication problems. For the Whyalla
artists, it was their first time working with someone outside their town
and with people who didn't speak English as their first language. It was
logistically challenging also. Australia is vast. Unexpectedly one day I
had to drive 11 hours to move parts of the installation to the festival in
Clare Valley. Since then I have been involved in a number of regional film
projects with actors and dancers all with similar stories. The word
'isolation' was often used. These projects highlighted to me how eager
these artists are to reach out and collaborate with others. This has
sparked my interest in networked performance and how it could be used to
assist collaboration in these remote areas of Australia.

All the best,
Chris
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