The A-LURE blog

What a mad few weeks it has been for Visionary Images! Last fortnight, a small contingent of us traveled to Shepparton for the launch of “Home is..”, a moving image artwork that grew out of a long-term collaboration between artists from VI and over 40 local young people.
The artwork explores issues of place, home, connection and identity and is a regional outcome of the A-LURE project. Over 140 residents of the Greater Shepparton area and people who work, play or visited the area were photographed and asked the question “what does home mean to you?”. Their portraits and text were then crafted into a moving billboard. This imagery was projected against the west wall of the Grandstand at the High Street Showgrounds during the annual SheppARTon Twilight Festival.
After harrowing technical issues and a day of stifling stress and heat, “Home is..” was warmly-received by a diverse Festival audience, with moving speeches from Monique Donaldson (local Shepparton-based artist), Nicole Smith (young person), Maria Filippow (VI Artistic Director) and Rob Robson (SheppARTon Artistic Director). Thank you to all involved, especially the young people who put in and got out of the project all they could. Thank you to Greater Shepparton City Council for their financial support and Word and Mouth and Uniting Care Cutting Edge for their generous in-kind assistance. Thanks to Monique and Darryl McConnell of Mooroopna Secondary for being great colleagues and supporters and for their belief. I will miss you (but I won’t miss the drive!)
Onto the next massive undertaking - A-LURE in Melbourne (Eugenia)

On Friday 14th March on a sticky hot day (40 degrees!) a group of us- VI members and associates- met to shoot some footage for the artwork ‘Touch’. ‘Touch’ will be completed soon and is one of the artworks players can visit during the A-LURE game in April. The location was an amazing studio in Yarraville called Kindred Studios. Here bands can rehearse and crews such as ours can hire spaces within the studio to film stuff. We were given the loft for the day- free of charge, which we are extremely grateful for given that VI is a not for profit organization. Giovanni Oliver was the actor. Giovanni studied at Swinburne University and V.C.A amongst other institutions and has stared and played supporting roles in many short films and theater productions. He was an absolute professional, dealing with heat, external noise and a difficult role like a trooper. In his grey shirt and Thai fisherman’s pants Giovanni WAS the lost soul that the role required. Kharen Harper and Caz Diaz (Director and Movement Director respectively) put him through is paces, while David Wolf worked the camera. Before wrapping for the day we watched the rushes and everyone was thrilled with the results. Post-production work is currently being done. This is sure to be a a visually arresting and moving artwork- see it evenings at Manchester Lane from April 12.

What’s your favourite thing to do with other people? This is the question we put in our window to start a conversation with our community. We had a great response and now have a second question: What scares you in life?

We don’t always know what age groups are answering as they can do this via sms. The answers are written on post it notes and stuck in the studio window. From those answers stem our individual projects.

We each chose two responses to the first question in the studio window and we are using a variety of mediums to represent the responses as best we can. I am doing stop motion of one of my responses and a Photoshop picture for my second. We hope these projects will be part of the Visionary Images A-LURE project in Melbourne and eventually will be shown in Millicent also.

We also did a group interview with community people for a video. We started with a question, which was ‘ what is your favourite thing to do with other people.’ After the question was asked someone new would answer that then they would ask a new question for the next person. There were a total of 21 people interviewed, ranging from 11 years old to 60 years and this is being edited now.

We have finally got the internet up and running on four computers now, which frees up the Macs so we can use Photoshop and the Final Cut Pro suite.

From everyone at Terra Art.

Hi! my name is Aimy, Terra Art is combined with my year 11 studies and i am gaining SACE (South Australian Certificate of Education) points while i attend.
We (as a group) put questions up on our studio window.
One of the questions was ‘What scares you in life?’, my answer was ‘death’.
I am now part way through illustrating what ‘death’ means to me by taking pictures of people in different age groups and then making it into a slide show to be presented.

It‘s been ages since we last wrote. This blog has been down whilst we have been working on the A-LURE website. You can now visit www.a-lure.org to find out more about what a-lure is, how it works and how you can get involved. The website will be the first point of contact for game players and watchers. So take a look.

So much has been going on here at VI. A-LURE is in full-scale production and all our work is progressing well. Here is a brief run down.

The Flemington Lure Project had its first public screening on Wednesday 6th of February 08. As the sun went down the lights came up as a projection on the basket ball forecourt on the Flemington Housing Estate. About 100 people viewed the artwork exploring identity, place and the social and cultural diversity of the Moonee Valley area. The evening was celebratory and the young people and artists who worked on the project were really pleased to have achieved so much. Many thanks to everyone who gave of their time so generously to ensure the project, the work created and its’ exhibition was such a success.

Our next launch is the work produced as part of the Shepparton Lure Project. This weekend as part of the SheppARTon Festival the Showgrounds become the screen for a large-scale projection. On Saturday 8th of March from 8 – 11 pm come and see the work produced shown big. It is sure to be great night.

Now for the progress of other artworks:

The Banquet is ready to go. The artwork has made its first appearance as a billboard skin on the corner of Bridge Rd and Church St Richmond. To find out more about the work go to the Here and Now Billboard Art Program

MAKE A CHOICE is in programming stage. The animated elements have been completed and Rhys has joined us to take it to the next stage. It is going to be a fabulous component in the greater A-LURE game. You can see a sneak preview on the art page on the a-lure site.

Kululee is in production with community members adding their stories. You will be sure to hear some delightful moments in people’s lives.

Freedom (working title) is in rehearsal stage. George ran some terrific script development workshops at VI and then came back to us with a really wonderful script. Maud, Kharen and Kaz from Somebody’s Daughter Theatre Company have been assisting with voice and movement direction and Giovanni is doing a great job of character embodiment. We are filming next week and then the programming begins…

Dance (working title) is in production development. Ajax is busily trying out Jitter to see how it works.

The generosity library is building. You can add you description in 160 characters or less of what generosity means to you. Just go to the website www.a-lure.org register to play and add to the show.

My name is Abdi. I been here for two week so far I love it here and I think I am doing good in here drawing animating and more stuff to do. I like doing different things. The more I do different things the more I learn what I wanted.
The workers here are so great they are the ones helping me.

Terra Art in Millicent South Australia has started work on their component for the A-LURE project. Terra Art is a youth art studio in a small regional town near the Victorian border that is based on the VI model. Over a 3-year period I mentored local artists, young people and community members. Together we developed and established a sustainable creative space where young people with experience of hardship collaborate with each other and artists to create meaningful public art. The project is supported through a partnership between Country Arts SA and South East Regional Health Service. The studio is a great success and testimony to the VI model of practice as a transferable model. Many local young people have engaged in projects and have found a way into other forms of education, training and access to services. Terra Art is a fabulous way for young people to take control and move positively forward in their lives. It was fantastic to catch up with the original members and meet the new young people who have joined the group.

Last week South Australian Media Artist Sasha Grbich and I met with the young people and local artist Caroline Hammat to discuss what they want to work on. They have decided to create a dialogue with local community members by using the front window of the studio (located on the main street) to ask questions and gather responses through SMS and hand written notes. These responses will be posted on the window and will form the basis of short moving images for mobile phone content. Another idea is to invite the town’s folk to have their image captured at a table. This will be edited together to create an endless shared feast between the local inhabitants.

Sasha will be working with Terra Art on a monthly basis and we are sure to see some great work being produced.

Maria

finnished-fly.swf

hey I’m new here so I’m still learning the basics but its heaps of fun using computers and animating may sound boring but you’d be surprised. its a great program for young people that want to learn how to make short movies, video games and more.
Today I have been working on the drawing and animating of a fly for a video game and the new internet site for A-LURE. It’s going to be interactive and heaps of fun.I’m not sure when the site is going to be up and running but we will be sure to let u guys know.
We use the computers alot but we also do alot of brain storming.
The best thing is that everyone gets a say no one is left out and there’s one other great thing here - there is always a good meal being prepared.