Water is created through the formation of stars and has been in existence for as long as the Universe. In it’s liquid, gaseous or solid forms it is vital to every life form on Earth. Spiritually and philosophically it is considered a purifier. Physically, for the most part, it is what we are.
The h2o project was driven by a fascination for how scientific technologies could be used to visualise otherwise invisible phenomena and create immersive experiences beyond two-dimensional flat-screen surfaces.
A specialised high-speed camera capable of frame rates up to 120,000 frames per second was used to capture and visualise air and water physics under pressure. The 34,119 individual macro images of the tiny rapidly moving bubbles, rendering visible the volcanic-like eruptions at the bubbles' surfaces, were captured at 16,000 frames per second in just two seconds. They were sequenced and played back over two hours as a projected moving image installation at Spring Hill Baths Queensland on the 22nd of October 2016, during the BARI16 (Brisbane Artist Run Initiatives Festival 2016).
Viewers immersed in the pool experienced the all-encompassing three-dimensionality of the projected imagery reflected on the pool surface, blurring the boundaries between the physical space and the virtual imagery. The fluidity of the water and voluminous space created a sense of freedom for the body through a buoyancy that transformed the spatial experience of gravity. The temporally stretched slow-motion imagery on the vertical screen, reflected on the horizontal plane of the pool surface, facilitated a body-space occupancy of an augmented pictorial space sonically overlayed with a responsive live musical improvisation by cellist Linda Hwang. The vibrational resonance of the combined sounds of the water, people in the pool, and the cello reverberated throughout the century-old timbers of the double-height swimming hall.
This approach aimed to provide a tactile, visceral, and embodied experience where the audience's perceptions were altered through a corporeal fusion of physics, time, and natural elements with the symbolic meanings of the heritage-listed building. This corporeality offers 'intrinsic' connections and embodied possibilities to space beyond the two-dimensional image plane. The spontaneous experience of participants' movement through the pool and interaction with the water's physical and immersive qualities created a 'corporeal aesthetics' (Pinney 2004, 8), where the relationship of the body with the image forms a spatial intensity that functions as a resistance to reason and literal meaning––contrary to the anaesthetic numbing of the senses that result from rational imagery, typically experienced on digital devices poluted with advertisements.
