Mock-up the & Creative Concept - Climate Action Beacon activation, 2021-2022

Overview of this approach

This mock-up for a creative concept is a response to the research project summaries of Griffith’s Climate Action Beacon (CAB) and the proposed projection sites as provided in the documentation. The video below is a visual treatment that could be applied to any of the prospective sites. The current shape and format of the image can be modified to the shape and context of the final site. It can be a very wide panorama format, as in this mock-up, a tall tower-like vertical format, or anything in between.

The creative approach is conceived of as an installation piece with long-form audience engagement experienced by viewers in their own time and space. It forms a continuous (5-minute) moving image loop that can be activated at night. It is proposed as an alternative approach to the live event approach (as in Greenpeace Arctic Global Day of Action project) that has a short-form audience experience and that depends heavily on scheduling, programming and the production of a ‘spectacle’ of sound and performance and which would require the contextualisation of ‘introductory speeches’ or media campaign. The soundtrack proposed for this piece is the natural sound of the ambient urban environment and the community.

Please note, the video is very rough and is indicative of aesthetics and concept only.

The speed and scale parameters are greatly exaggerated for the screen-sized scale in which you are viewing this video. The parameters for the final scale and viewing distances will need to be determined by the dimensions, scale and position of the final selected site and in relation to the projector position. The specifications of the selected site will be used to inform the parameters of the final video file, in particular, the scale and position of the kinetic text so that it is legible and conforms with realistic audience dwell times.

The colours in the background imagery will recede further into darkness in a live projection environment. Therefore the typographic content will appear more strongly in relation to the background, giving more perceived depth to the imagery.

Please refer to the specifics below for more detail on the conceptual nature of this work and how it relates to CAB.

The two conceptual elements

There are two essential conceptual elements in this visual treatment. (1) The monochromatic poetic kinetic text which refers to the Climate Action Beacon research itself, and (2) the coloured data visualisations that represents Griffith’s physical presence at South Bank, and is a reflection of the immediate environment and community. The two elements are composited together in a 2-dimensional workspace and are highly malleable, which allows great compositional flexibility. 3-dimensional effects may be added, to increase the immersive or trompe-l'œil qualities if time and budget constraints permit.

The poetic kinetic text

The first conceptual element, the kinetic text, is a poetic representation of the depth and breadth of each of the CAB research projects. Each kinetic text block will form an expression of each of the project summaries. Many of these project summaries are currently written in future tense and are speculative. It is suggested, for the purpose of audience experience and engagement, that the summaries be re-edited to take a more poetic and less academic form and be changed to the present tense. This contributes to the currency, sense of urgency, and also activates a participatory mindset in the viewer–“this is happening and I can be a part of this”. The place-holder text used in the mock-up video was selected from Bianca Beetson’s project summary of Connected to Country. This has been used in duplicate to illustrate how the different scales positions, speeds and orientations of the many textual components could be composed and developed. It is not intended to be comprehensible in this example, but rather to be indicative. In the final version of this visualisation, each project would be represented spatially with its own text block and temporally with an appropriate timeframe that to synchronise dwell times with viewing distances. The varying scales and positions of the text blocks create a sense of depth and proximity as a means of solving the issue of multiple and simultaneous audiences viewing distances. People who experience the work from greater distances (eg. from across the river) will be able to comprehend the meaning of the work through the larger keywords and maybe ‘lured’ closer to further investigate the work in closer proximity. People in closer proximity to the installation (eg. Grey St. or Bougainvillea walk) will have the opportunity to contemplate each of the CAB projects in more detail by experiencing the kinetic text blocks in their entirety as the stories unfold.

The data visualisations–Smart City as digital placemaking

The coloured data visualisation imagery, created on South Bank, is a representation of the proposed installation site itself. It highlights the context of ‘place’. It is both a conceptual and literal expression of the presence of Griffith University on South Bank and the wider South Bank community. The urban life and the built and natural environment, represented by the colour, backgrounds the CAB research (kinetic text) and ties it to the physics of space and the ephemerality of place as a human activity. The vibrant and changing colour palette was formed by visually encoding motion-capture of the South Bank environment, the wind in the trees, the passing of traffic and pedestrians. The visual language of this data visualisation situates the work within the contexts of Smart City urban informatics, media architecture and digital placemaking contexts. This acknowledges current research into living and working in sustainable cities of the future in an age of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things, and how information, in this case, the CAB research and the community, cohabitate and are visually expressed on urban screens. Australian Universities are emerging as a strong centre for media architecture research and development and Brisbane’s urban screens will become more prominent with the completion of the Cross River Rail. This approach poses an opportunity for Griffith University to engage further in this discourse and take a lead in the development of South Bank’s visual futures.

Proposed Location