MAJOR WORKS &
Feature Length Shows
IN THIS ROOM EVERYWHERE
Audio visual installation: 3x portrait aspect 4K screens
with prerecorded and generative audio processing and 1x landscape aspect subtitles screen (43 mins)
Debut at Science Gallery Melbourne ‘Dark Matters’ Exhibition - August 2023
More information here.
PARTICLE/WAVE
Fulldome format show with 5.1 surround sound & live musical performance (60mins - Unabridged).
Debut - Melbourne International Arts Festival - October 2018
An immersive multimedia experience in the planetarium dome. The show has had sell out shows across Australia and has featured in the UK, Germany and Japan.
"The Universe has spoken and we have understood."
David Blair, astrophysicist at the UWA and LIGO collaboration member.
Particle/Wave is an exploration of art and science showcased under the spectacular dome of the planetarium. Poets, musicians, sound and video artists – alongside renowned scientists – have collaborated to present a creative glimpse of the incredible story of gravitational waves.
Over one hundred years ago Albert Einstein suggested gravitational waves could be a natural outcome of his general theory of relativity, which states that very massive objects distort the fabric of space and time—an effect we perceive as gravity.
Gravitational waves are the ripples in that spacetime, traveling away from their original source: exploding stars, collisions between neutron stars, merging black holes or a single star rotating briskly and irregularly. These waves are washing over Earth all the time, but our instruments have not been sensitive enough to detect them until recently. This breakthrough has been recognised with the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking said, ‘Gravitational waves provide a completely new way of looking at the universe.’ How do we observe this discovery through the lens of humanity? What stories do gravitational waves tell?
With writers ALICIA SOMETIMES, KRISSY KNEEN, MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE, LISA GORTON, OMAR MUSA, JORDIE ALBISTON and sound artists ANDREW WATSON, CAMILLA HANNAN and NAT BATES and video by ANDREW WATSON, ISOBEL KNOWLES, BENJAMIN PORTAS, MARK MYERS, CARL KNOX, DEE MASON and SAR RUDDENKLAU. Scientists: KATIE MACK, KENDALL ACKLEY, ALAN DUFFY and LING SUN.
Co-producer & Musical Director: Andrew Watson
Director and producer: Alicia Sometimes
With support from OzGrav, Museums Victoria, Creative Victoria, Australia Council and Hobsons Bay City Council.
REVIEWS:
"The event is dazzling, with beautiful visual graphics interspersed with poetry, sound art and scientific theory ... it effortlessly demonstrates the beauty in science."
Dotti Mazga - The Plus Ones
"It’s very much multimedia for eyes, ears and hearts."
Thuy On, ArtsHub
"It’s a show that’s at once spectacular and intimate, bringing home the confounding mysteries of the universe"
Alison Croggon - Witness Performance
“While this visual feast unfolds, poets offer more reflective responses, posing the big and small questions raised by the science.... They’re accompanied by a gorgeously cinematic score, enhanced by musical director Andrew Watson’s live violin…”
Time Out
ELEMENTAL
Fulldome format show with 5.1 surround sound & live musical performance (45mins)
Debut - Melbourne International Arts Festival - October 2009
Elemental is a unique exploration of science, art and the universe showcased under the spectacular dome theatre of the planetarium. Poets, musicians, sound and video artists – and world-renowned science writer John Gribbin – have collaborated to present the world of the most literary, dazzling and passionate stars.
For centuries, poets have looked to the skies and attempted to scribble meaning into the galaxies. The novelist Peter de Vries once wrote, ‘The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination, but the combination is locked up in the safe.’ What if we had a key, even if only for a moment? What if we could measure, in words, what we have only imagined? Einstein took the view, ‘the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.’ What if he is right?
The artists involved in this show explore many scientific understandings surrounding the beginnings of the universe: The Big Bang, The Theory of Everything, Dark Matter and M Theory. Are these the lost poetic lectures of the beginning of time?
Legendary UK experimental musicians Nurse with Wound’s work is based on the theory that the resonant frequency of the Big Bang was F# and features in the beginning of the show. The memorable voice of the late Dr Carl Sagan – the writer and creator of the award-winning series Cosmos – was on loan for one of the works.
Poets Alicia Sometimes, Sean M Whelan, Emilie Zoey Baker, and Ryan Van Winkle creatively interpret the. Science, poetry and music all under the one roof.
Visual artists: Andrew Watson, Ai Yamamoto, Alex Scott and Chris Nelms.
Sound artists: Andrew Watson, Ai Yamamoto, Nat Bates, Dan Gorman and Chris Nelms.
In Melbourne: live performances by Andrew Watson and Claire Fischer
Thanks to Drew Berry for his animation of the DNA sequence.
With support from Arts Victoria, Museums Victoria and Hobsons Bay City Council.
With thanks to the incredibly amazing staff at the Melbourne Planetarium, especially Warik Lawrance and Tanya Hill
Reviews:
‘…As if to emphasise that, the surprise hit of this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival, which began at the weekend, is Elemental, a melding of music and poetry at the Melbourne Planetarium. Last night's show was an extra one in response to the surprising sell-out of the original program. Even the organisers had not foreseen poetry as hit material.’
The Age
Elemental is almost beyond definition. It’s an exploration of quantum physics and modern cosmology through video art, music, poetry and live performance. Yes, quantum physics. It explores four key theories of modern astro-physics about the universe and how it began, and is a collaboration between poets, musicians, sound and video artists and world renowned science writer John Gribbin.
Australian Stage
The implications of modern astrophysics inspire an intriguing and immersive multimedia collaboration at the Melbourne Planetarium.
Arts Hub