Brown, C; Scoones, R; Gibson, R; Martelli, B
(Ars Electronica Festival 2020, 2020)
WAHAWAEWAO is a Moving Image Installation developed as a VR Mozilla Hub Exhibition for the Ars Electronica Festival 2020 In Kepler's Gardens. Movement and landscape in flux, five figures wander across the landscape of Central Otago. Between the rocks and crevices, they move. The work explores our persistent longing for belonging in an age of virtual travel. Filmed in the raw physical landscapes of Central Otago and the Motion Capture Studio of CoLab AUT in Auckland, it maps between radically different scapes. The consolations of landscape dissolve as fractures and junctures open between the memory and affect of these different atmospheres, altering the performers transit. In this new cartography, that is here and everywhere; their bodies take on the rhythms of an altered place. Tracked in all dimensions, they become trackers, navigating travel to unknown and ungraspable places.