What Were You Thinking?

What Were You Thinking?
By Doc Lisa
This is the radio show on East Side FM. 89.7. Monday Morning’s Art Interview Show.
11.30 til 12 midday.

Dr Lisa Anderson gets into a conversation with artists, architects, designers, film makers, actors, composers, writers and recently in my ‘creative-types’ I spoke with Dean Cameron, an environmental scientist and Inventor of the Year.
I tend to anchor the show to idea of diaries/journals/blogs and general documentation and dram spaces as part of the process of creating. This allows our chats to range across fields of endeavour and exchange concepts of how we approach our creative work in a 30-minute show. Thus we can have a full conversation more than a date blog.
Dean Cameron was really interesting, as an inventor he had done many things, while working at the University of Melbourne he invented the mechanism to make working reflectors for bicycles. He didn’t patent it and learnt a lesson from that.
Dean’s aim in life is to get clean water for all. To do this he invented a product called Biolytix, which is used by local government groups to begin the breakdown of sewerage in the pipes long before it gets to the process plant. This idea Dean came up with by observing nature, specifically documenting the ways that plants breakdown on the edge of stream, and mimicking that action and chemical makeup.
He has recently been to India to work in a program he has been setting up with the UN’s International Inventors group to work on his clean water project in communities there.
While working with these systems he realised that needing inexpensive and lighter water tanks, that did not need experts, welding etc. He then invented a system called Joinlox, again by mimicking nature.
There are many uses for this, and in fact Dean and I have been working for a couple of years with one of my projects, Ice Caravans, where I intend to create large scale flat-pac sculptures that can easily be moved, strong, weather proof and able to cross between art and architecture.
Dean says that one of the elements is creating a virtual library of the ideas, the processes and the collaborative work with designers, artists like myself, and who ever he is working with.
Dean wants all of his inventions to help us all make a gentler footprint on the Planet.
Then for my it was pull out the all stops work of the X-Media Lab in Sydney. This is where they select a number of projects (art/film/gaming/writing) that have digital and new media implications. The selected projects are then taken through a workshop process where international experts in their fields mentor our process.
It was extraordinary. Getting to chat with some of the brightest people in the field, ask questions and the general offers of help, advice, equipment, skills and even funding or hosting has been wonderful.
My project is called shinyshinycloud, and you can see my website shinyshinycloud.com for more information. However one of the other cutting edge projects in the mix was put forward by Lynette Wallworth and her producer Sue Maslin.
Lynette generously came along for an interview at Eastside. We spoke of her process, which involves working in residencies a lot. Something we both do and which allows us to ask questions that no else really gets to. Some time ago she started work with James Cook University to film and understand the Great Barrier Reef.
Lynette has since developed many works from this experience, including a Biennale work which I saw several years ago where you held a large glass bowl which held the light projection in it. Standing in the darkened space in small groups we felt in touch with something special, holding light in a bowl. Sheer beauty.
Lynette is currently developing one of her projection works for the Sydney Festival next year, so we should all be able to experience this amazing experience that she builds into her work.
We talked specifically of some of her interactive works, one where she had worked with a group of women in Australia who had all been political refugees. She created a book about their experiences and stories that you could view in the installation work.
One entered the darkened space and ahead was a screen where the women are projected. If you go forward and lift your hand and place it on the smoky area of the glass/screen one of the refugee women, whose stories you have read will step forward and place their hand against yours.
Lynette works with touch in her work. The holding of the bowl the touching of virtual hands. These things are the stuff of emotion and personalisation. Lynette and I spoke of many things, from the fabulous weekend we had just had in X-Media Lab hosted by Customs House and the Sydney Opera House, to the keeping of small things as reminders of place and story.
Lynette keeps stones from places. She carries one with her frequently. Her diary that does not help us answer, if we ever needed to ask…What were you thinking?
Then I was called for Jury Duty and had to pre-tape one. I hate doing that. I feel that live radio is much more interesting than pre-recorded. I have always loved the medium of radio. And it is now digital!!
Jungle Phillips was visiting from Adelaide for his Sydney exhibition at Artery Gallery in Rozelle. Jungle is an outsider artist and his show was opened by Colin Rhodes the Director of Sydney College of the Arts.
Jungle told me of many things, his house which is almost a diary in a sense. He has covered it in arts work. Jungle works on about 20 paintings a day. Jungle starts the day by priming up 20 canvas/wood/surfaces, which are laid out on trestle tables in the backyard. The he begins to paint. He works on all the paintings at once. Creating elements and colours and placing them within his compositions.
Jungle tells me that before he took his drugs for schizophrenia he used to paint 1000 paintings a day. But he tells me with a big laugh that his recent marriage would stop him painting that many as well. My brother has schizophrenia and is violent, so I asked Jungle about his reaction to the drugs.
Jungle loves the world, and writes this into his paintings every day. He looks for the beautiful rather than the ugly, and searches in his world for kindness not cruelty, peace not war and above all love and never hate. Jungle makes up his texts, but they do invite us to wonder about his way of seeing, of depicting this colourful world of flowers, groovy girls, and happy characters.
We will never really get an answer to What Were You Thinking? from Jungle. But I think we should just enjoy…and listen to the stories that tumble from him at any opportunity.

So…one more show for me before a short Xmas break, back in mid January. I am off on adventures to film at Lake Mungo for my installation in development…shinyshinycloud.
Here is a photo Katrina took of Jungle and me at the studio Eastside 89.7 FM.

Jungle and Me taken by Kat at Eastside