Lake Levels (Lake Mackintosh), 2010, four-channel 2K media installation, 28 mins, silent.

A body of work is in development from an Australia Council for the Arts 'Connections' Residency with Hydro Tasmania (July 2009 - June 2010). Engaging with technologies and processes of controlling and monitoring environmental flow, and informed by the traditions of experimental film and video, landscape is captured through a process-led interaction of technology and the environment.

Meadowbank Drawn Down, Dam Wall Drawn Across and Meadowbank were made when the water level of Meadowbank Lake was 'drawn down' five meters for the spillway gates at Meadowbank Dam to be inspected and tested as part of Hydro Tasmania's dam safety program - the water level hadn't been lowered this far for about 40 years. Shot from the water using two RED ONE digital cinema cameras with a set of cinematic lenses, each camera was fixed to the boat so that its motion determined point of view.

Meadowbank Drawn Down and Meadowbank show landscape exposed over a matter of days as the lake is drained. Also from this event, another work (still in progress) documents measured stretches - or subsamples - of the length of the flooded lake during the drawdown. Again the exposed water level mark is visible across and within the landscape and in places the natural river is revealed.

Dam Wall Drawn Across comprises two shots (with different lenses) recorded together that track across the face of the dam wall, the boat turning 90° at the beginning to move along the wall then turning 90° away from it at the end. Edited one shot after the other with one in reverse motion and flipped horizontally, the wall is drawn across to face itself, enclosing a space that is circled continuously as a loop. While the horizontal 'plimsoll line' evidences mark-making, vertical lines score movement and passage.

Shot on the West Coast and in the Central Highlands of Tasmania, further works include Lake Levels (Lake Mackintosh), Lake Levels (Arthurs Lake) and Margin (Murchison Gorge). Based on the operations of an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler used to collect hydrology data (mapping underwater terrain, measuring water flow), an underwater housing mount was designed and fabricated to situate the Super 35mm-scaled digital camera alongside the ADCP unit at the surface of the water, fixed to the boat, the camera's orientation at 90° for a vertical field of view extending above and below water (see catalogue, link is below).

Margin (Murchison Gorge) is a single, linear tracking shot in which the rotated lens at water level 'scans' the remote, old growth environment, a quivering band of reflections flowing between the rare flora above and the blackness below.

Click here to download the Lake Levels catalogue PDF - essay by sue.k © 2010.

Click here to go to the Australia Council for the Arts website page about the residency and view a two-minute excerpt of Lake Levels (Lake Mackintosh).

Part of 'Kelly's Garden Curated Projects 10' curated by Seán Kelly. Engaging with the ground plane of the space, three tonnes of white crushed limestone is introduced into the walled garden already laid with 'Tassie Gold' crushed limestone. The carpet of stones seems to fold back on itself to reveal its underside and the earth beneath, so activating the entire garden. A stairwell allows views from above.

Video documentation describes texture, tone and geometry in a series of stationary shots, as bright sunlight shifting across the installation burns out areas of the image.

From a body of work ongoing since 2000 that explores repetition and stasis in relation to narrative through the digital manipulation of the moving image. In scenes from found footatge, action is suspended and perpetuated, isolated from its original narrative context and re-invested with new meaning.

Click here to read online article discussing the videos, 'Temporal Oscillator' by Philip Watkins in RealTime (issue 94 Dec 2008 - Jan 2009).