As the culmination of the residency, I presented a showing of a work in progress. The work was a site-specific interactive audiovisual installation made for the Serial Space bathroom. As participants entered a dark narrow space, the movement of their bodies caused a sensor to trigger an interview clip to play and the sound of testimony to echo through the space. The video had been processed to give it a ghostly aesthetic and it was back-projected onto a small glass window so the interviewees appeared like specters of South Sydney. I wanted to create the impression that our everyday spaces are teaming with memories of things that have occurred there.
This archive of everyday memories, recounted through the act of the interview, together forms a set of histories – a narrative. But in the context of the installation, the narrative became disrupted. As participants moved around they discovered that their actions both triggered and also suspended different clips, so they heard fragments of stories – their physical intervention creating a form of agency as their movements joined particles of memories together to make new narratives….