Sound recordings from a flexi disc dialogue about past life regression, and other assorted antique vinyl library sound effects, were reformatted as optical sound waveforms by recording into a 16mm sound camera, hand-processing the film, and contact printing the resulting waveforms into a composition for live performance.

Sounds surface and regress, male voices ‘authorise’ and female voices ‘characterise’, as an uncannily obscured field of light and dark unfolds on screen. Created by the texture of the sticky tape used to hold down the composition during printing, the flickering film frames surpass normal levels of visual intelligibility, compelling the viewer to hallucinate a non-existent visual subtext. Sound and light weave into a disorienting cacophony, intensified and punctuated by an antique laboratory strobe light and an anti-syncopating rotating shutter intervening before the projector’s light beam. Indicated in the repetition of the sound sample, ‘To find a memory in the vastness of time…’ Ghosts – Loud and Strong explores the experience of sensations that threaten to exceed our capacity to perceive or understand them.

“Please stand by while we power up the reactor. Excellent, we are now at full capacity. Unfortunately, due to the fragile nature of the human body, you will start to feel some fairly unpleasant symptoms as we begin our descent; increased heart rate, inability to discern geometric forms, sweaty palms, subtle ontological necrosis and most peculiarly, the ability to recognise elements of something but yet be unable to integrate these elements together into comprehensible perceptual wholes… more on that later. Our submersible is a V3 Soviet era Polivoks Formanta. When you hear this sound, it indicates that the machine is failing and you should begin your aquatic transformation. We understand that this is, typically, horrifically painful but we ask while you are in this agony to think of the first land animals on our planet. Did they emerge in fishtanks with hydraulic legs? Preposterous! They adapted. We will now start probing your electro-chemical biology with our patented ‘xeno’ sinewaves and light particles. On behalf of everyone here at Xenosine Industries, I would like to thank you all for your participation and contribution to science. Risk is synonymous with gain.”

A deck-side collision course of Hollywood explosive FX and cartoon cereal sound.

Fixed Wash is an installation utilising a live digital video feed and found objects that reverts to one of the Diamantina’s ‘former lives’ – her time as an oceanographic survey vessel. Re-creating a ghost-net snared by the Diamantina during a oceanic survey mission, Fixed Wash traps the viewer within the installation image, via a live camera feed plagued by corrupted video artifacts that tangle and collide as they attempt to map the viewer’s movements.

The installation channels recordings of mysterious maritime radio transmissions through a cassette walkman, which in turn cause visual distortion on a monitor showing a sonar screen. The audio signal is mediated through live manipulations and effects, creating a synaesthetic intercourse between analogue and digital, reality and fantasy. In its combination of authentic but bizarre signals at sea, the work conjures up imaginary voyages through uncharted zones, unintercepted by conventional logic.

Turbulence comprises a family of works – live audiovisual, video and light installation in concert with text-based works – to reflect on the physicality of marine and weather systems, the psychology of ocean voyage, and the narratives of conflict and displacement that are generated by the Diamantina in the present day. Turbulence, as a term with both a specific scientific definition and socio-political resonance, offers an opportunity to pry into the juncture between media, metaphor and meaning. In the audiovisual piece, the spectator’s movement generates a primitivistic ripple effect, which echoes in the abstracted imagery of environmental catastrophe in the looping video work and ‘frozen animation’ frames posted on the wall of the space. In the deepest recesses of the Paint Lamp Room, light refracts from Mylar to expose the hidden depths of one of the darkest cavities on the ship. All are infused with a sensibility of primal geometry, differently realised in digital and analogue versions of endless permutation and eternal return. As a series of studies in varying media staged in one of the ship’s furthest extremities, Turbulence meditates simultaneously on the agoraphobia of open water and the unsettling chaos of environmental turbulence, and communicates the fear, isolation and disorientation of those who’ve come across the seas.

Minimalist object-based installation incorporating light, bricks and cement. Urn Ove explores the impost on human consciousness created by the conditions of spatial arbitration. The occupation of these quarters with impenetrable objects evokes the institutionalisation and separation of the legitimate citizen from the expendable body, which is otherwise effectively rendered invisible in the setting of new-look razor-wire imperialism.

This 16mm film and sound installation establishes dialogues between the projected image, recorded sound and the performer’s body. This work explores the emotional disassociation manufactured by civilians towards refugees, asylum seekers and other victims of territorial or financial war zones. The cognitive dissonance generated by the (Australian) “national” subject remotely viewing the suffering and alienation of the “other” (object) in conflict zones or between contested boundaries creates a unique state of being – like an insulating conceptual plexiglass barrier.  Seeking equilibrium, EmotoExile ventures to transgress these constructions by placing the artist as an emotional exile under the direct gaze of the live-yet-transient studio audience.