Transcience

Inspired by the daily travels of commuters and the diversity of Surrey’s community, Transience is a computer-driven artwork that changes every time you see it.

The artwork draws from a database of thousands of images and sounds created by the artists. Each time the SkyTrain passes nearby, it responds to its movement and recombines and presents its content in a new way. Among the images are cascading poetic phrases, three-dimensional geometric drawings, and the eyes, ears, and mouths of a hundred different people recomposed into new figures.

Tune into 89.9 FM when you are nearby using your car stereo or MP3 player to hear the accompanying soundtrack that includes sounds of raindrops, gamelan gongs, and piano notes in John Cage‐style (based on the emotions of the rasa Indian tradition).

The changing imagery and poetic sounds of Transience invite us to consider, as we pause or pass through our surroundings, how we perceive community, movement, and transition in our daily lives. How do we construct, experience, and remember what we see and hear around us? The artists refer to their work as a "cinema of braided processes" as they combine video, audio, animation, and several other strands of content and interaction to create the ever surprising artwork.

About the Artists

Aleksandra Dulic

Aleksandra Dulic is media artist, theorist, and filmmaker working at the intersections of interactive multimedia installation and live performance. She is also a researcher in cross‐cultural media performance, interactive animation, and computational poetics. She has received a number of awards for her short animated films. Her artistic work is widely presented in exhibitions, festivals, and television broadcasts across Europe, Asia, and North America. These works include films, animated media performances, interactive computer installations, software tools for interactive animation, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations with composers and artists in various disciplines (music, dance, theatre, poetry, shadow play). She teaches at the University of British Columbia where she also directs the Centre for Culture and Technology—an interdisiplinary arts-research centre.

Kenneth Newby

Kenneth Newby is a media artist, composer-performer, educator, interaction designer, and audio producer whose creative practice explores the use of technology to enable media performances and installations that are rich in aural, visual, and cultural nuances. His work is widely presented in exhibitions, concerts, festivals, and radio broadcasts throughout Canada, Asia, Europe, and the USA. These works include compositions of media performance, electro-acoustic, and acoustic music; interactive computer systems for live performance and installation; software tools for composition of music and animation, new composition for Javanese and Balinese gamelan ensembles; interdisciplinary collaborations with composers and artists in various disciplines (film, video, dance, theatre, poetry, shadow play); and participation in improvisational ensembles.

Curator: Liane Davison
Origin of Exhibition: Surrey Art Gallery

Image credit: Flicker Art Collaboratory (Aleksandra Dulic & Kenneth Newby), Transience, 2010. Photo by Sharon Doucette.