Location: Bondi Junction Westfield atrium, Bondi Junction, Tower 1

When: July 2007

Zina Kaye installed Hyperplex, an intervention within a sophisticated LED system that disrupted the media saturated environment of Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre with a series of obscure, but subversive conversations. Shoppers and flanneurs were able to peek into the lives of several people who corresponded via the LCD system. Three pairs of characters: an eloquent couple who have moved from lovers to best friends; an eccentric brother and sister who correspond through coded exchange; and two teenagers tossed about by their desires, ’spoke’ to each other in a mix of colloquialisms, aphorisms, sayings and mixed metaphors.

The conversations dealt, in part with the proliferation of the language of fear. These tensions were subtley translated within Kaye’s script from different generational perspectives. Viewers eavesdropped on part of a conversation and could contemplate the familiar yet fragmented nature of interpersonal communication.

To view the work and artist interview:

Zina Kaye: Hyperplex interview and installation

Press:

Hyperplex – Ella Maudie. ANAT Filter 67.

Active Loitering – James Dodd. ANAT Filter 67.

Text Messages: Zina Kaye, Caia Hagel & Tim Georgeson – George Alexander. ArtAsiaPacific No. 56.

Hyperplexic, desalinated by not scary – Ann Finegan, Artlink Vol 28, No. 1

See also:

What’s in Store: Visual Merchandising News – Amanda Carr. WGSN.com, September 2007.

T100 October 2007 Visual Merchandising Report. T100.cn

An artist is scanning ACARS at Melbourne Airport, and showing the information on LED signs at a new exhibition in the Australian Centre for the Moving Image opening 8th June 2004.

Zina Kaye makes visible a cross section of the data that orbits an airport, drawing connections between the dispersive & disorientating nature of air travel, and the quietly invisible chaos of radio traffic. The work is called ‘The Line Ahead’ and can be seen during the ‘2004: Australian Art Now’ exhibition until mid-September.

Viewers in the gallery are presented with a giddy vision of the chaotic movement of data and the private conversations of aeroplanes: flight numbers, origin and destination shown on three giant LED screens. Behind the scenes, a Winradio-built antenna is bolted to the roof of Melbourne Airport, connected to a Winradio receiver sitting on top of a Linux server. The Open Source ACARSd project decodes the messages, transmitting them to the signs at the gallery and to The Line Ahead website.

Kaye finds inspiration in big engineering such as space stations and radio telescopes, and her work often reflects on the systems that make these things work. She exhibits in Australia and Europe.

Note for the present

This work is still live and scanning Sydney: visit the website for latest flights: The Line Ahead.

Collector’s Edition

A collector’s edition of this work is available. Please contact Clare Lewis at Terminus Projects for enquireies. Clare (at) terminusprojects (dot) org.

Wade pulled together a small team to build a prototype semi-autonomous robot in a Victorian dress. Our job was to provide an interface between the web and the controller board. We installed a small webserver on an EeePC netbook. An Adobe Flash socket sent mouse clicks and speech instructions to a tiny Python server that interpreted whether the instructions should be forwarded to the controller board or handled by the EeePC. Speech commands were forwarded to the onboard Festival server using an MBROLA english male voice and then piped to the sound card.

We used small form MicroClient SNR computers running Debian and some funky Python scripts. The system was quite polite – should you refuse any message it would leave you alone henceforth.

The Stride was the artwork we tested with. An installation depicting the final 100m of Cathy Freeman’s gold medal 400m sprint. We sent the public a text description, then a video of the race, finally an image of the site. Response was much better than expected given the public’s general suspicion of Bluetooth in general.

We took an Eee PC connected to an old Garmin III running Kismet. Lid down. Earpiece pinging. Raining. Shoes with holes. I’m certainly glad the police didn’t tap me on the shoulder. Go rider!

We post-processed the logs in Python to generate Google Earth KML files depicting the coverage. For an old girl the Rocks is certainly rocking to the WiFi.