Title/Date: enable (2020).

Author(s): Sophie Reid-Singer (clunkk).

Place of Publication: “Open Wide” at KEPK (Brisbane).

Format: Interactive projection artwork (local multiplayer videogame). 

Downloadable via: https://clunkk.itch.io/enable-2020.

Statement:

enable (2020) is a standalone, generative artwork. It was installed as a projection, several metres across, on a raised wall at Wide Open in 2020. This was the opening group exhibition for KEPK, an art-space located in Meanjin/Brisbane. Artists included Melina Celik, Niccolò Masini, Fausto Vergara, Morgan Roberts & many more.

enable was exhibited when COVID-19 guidelines for social distancing were first eased. The artwork’s main feature is two 3D pointer fingers that fumble into and flee from one other. The force at which the two figures are drawn together is interpolated via data collected by a live audio stream of the chatter and foot-traffic of the audience, anxiously interacting. When the two figures are touching, the animation is amplified with several thick outlines.

Findings:

TLDR; In this artwork, the cyborg is again described as computer cursors (Pointer Fingers), but the operation occurs through a cybernetic interplay between the environment, community, and machine.

Imagery of cyborgs in this videogame did not emancipate disabled peoples from the strict legal conditions imposed by the Australian Government.

However, I learnt new strategies for public installation, direct and indirect interaction, and continued to expand on the animation style I had been formalizing as Muliebrity [i]. enable reuses the 3D pointer finger that I modeled in the earlier work, response (2020), but describes interactions between characters on and off screen in a more positive light. Deviating from previous artworks such as Master Hands (2020), enable was not modulated by a rhythmic drum beat but hubbub of the local art-scene communing after much uncertainty.

Video documentation of the event was published by KEPK, seen below.

Side Note:

It was serendipitous that the HDMI cable I was provided by KEPK produced several, green scan lines. This glitch complemented my computer-generated imagery, operating as both a method and a message. As a welcome disruption to the genealogy of social convention, a glitch presents opportunities for new interactions to gestate.

Below is a machinima demonstrating this artworks gamic interplay, which I contribute to by clapping.