Future Nature

Keith Armstrong

For 20 years Keith has specialised in collaborative, hybrid, new media works with an emphasis on innovative performance forms, site-specific electronic arts, networked interactive installations, alternative interfaces, public arts practices, and art-science collaborations. His ongoing research focuses on how scientific and philosophical ecologies can both influence and direct the design and conception of networked, interactive media artworks.

Uncanny Intimacy suggests the need for a radical rethink of ecological ethics: by considering human existence as fundamentally a coexistence, we might more easily consider what ecologies need to be better understood.

Explore the work of Keith Armstrong here.

Image: Vincent Buret

Justin Cawley

As a designer, Justin's work addresses the subject of the microcosm in contemporary architecture. He has exhibited in Sydney and London, and has received awards from the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Australian Institute of Architects and the University of Sydney.

Inside Nature is an attempt to transform the Australian Museum’s Long Gallery in ways which brings the production and maintenance of subjectivities in the museum to the fore. The Museum’s scientific and educational project is reformulated through the lens of architecture, understood as both a reflexive and speculative spatial practice of ordering and containing life.

Explore Justin's work here.

Image: Vincent Buret

Alan Giddy

New Zealand born sculptor Alan Giddy works in Sydney as one of Australia’s foremost proponents of sustainable energy systems. Alan’s pioneering use of alternative energy systems and light in ‘time-based sculpture’ began in 1992. Since then, his practice has expanded into the public domain, specifically publicly-sited ‘active sculptures’ aimed at reinvigorating public space.

Since 1992, the light in The Clock has slowly been breaking the carbon bonds holding the wood together. At this rate, the light will completely dissipate the wood specimen within 350 years. While we are often unable to comprehend the magnitude of the challenges currently facing us, The Clock allows us to think beyond our own brief mortality.

Image: Vincent Buret

Pierre Proske

Pierre is an Australian artist intrigued by the pervasiveness of technology in science and culture and its relationship to nature. His work exposes the unspoken relationships we have with technology; his particular interest lies in the interface between the biologic and the synthetic.

He studied Electrical Engineering and Liberal Arts at the University of Melbourne, and earned a Masters of Art and Technology at Chalmers University, Gothenburg. He is director of Media Lab Melbourne, experimenting in technology, arts and design and has presented his work both nationally and internationally.

Brickets explores frequency as a concept that binds natural and artificial worlds – from a steady heart beat, or the measurable wavelengths of light, to the recurring call of an insect or the ubiquitous pulsating of our machines. Brickets is an ecology of 20 networked sound boxes that simulate the communication patterns of frogs.

Explore Pierre's work here.

Image: Courtesy of the artist

Sue Anne Ware

Sue Anne Ware is Head of the School of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Newcastle. She has produced over 100 research outputs and more than 30 major exhibitions and creative works. Her work is notable for its contribution to a growing discourse in landscape architecture underpinned by design activism and research.

Bunny Refugees is a diorama focusing on the feral and the unwanted. The subject is the uninvited rabbit; an introduced species and misunderstood animal. Bunny Refugees deliberately conflates humans and rabbits in a cautious attempt to question who or what “belongs” in Australia.

Explore the work of Sue Anne here.

Image: Vincent Buret