Casula Powerhouse Residency

In April this year we spent an intensely productive three weeks as in-residence artists at Casula Powerhouse.

Conveniently, Casula Powerhouse is right next to Casula station. But we had too much gear to all catch the train for our bump-in, so for the first visit we drove. Once you jump off the Hume Highway, to get to the Powerhouse you must drive down a winding, narrow, almost jungle-like path. As you come down an incline and meet the train tracks coming out of Casula station, a sprawling, modern building and rusted, immense silos rise sharply to greet you against the oncoming horizon.

Crossing over the railroad tracks, you’re in an altogether different place; slightly isolated, open, free… This was the setting for CuriousWorks first-ever residency and first-ever Kinect lab.

Kinect is a place for us to research and develop open-source, affordable, portable technologies. To some of you, this is all sounding very familiar. To others, this may sound like Greek: I recommend you check into Hugo’s post on open-source software after reading this one. Trust me, open-source is an exciting concept for anyone who has a computer and well worth reading more about.

Back to the residency. In twenty-one isolated, rigorous days we develop the following prototypes: a touch screen interface that triggers images, sounds and movies in real-time; simple circuits that can be embedded into everyday clothing items and can trigger audio or visuals on the basis of your movement; a portable speaker system for $30 - allowing people to turn their backpack or mailbox, for example, into a speaker; a soft drink bottle that can graffiti in light; and a Texta that can mix and post-produce audio and visuals with gestural movements (for example - you move your hand up, and the music you are playing gets louder; you move it down, and the music gets quieter).

A very successful showing was had on 1st May, and partners from our Liverpool and Redfern community programs came along and had lots of wonderful things to say, which made us all pretty happy.

All of these technologies will be shared in CuriousWorks’ All Around You labs and utilised in our own artistic projects. They will also be made available to the open-source community. We’ll have a separate website documenting our process in the labs and demoing the final outcomes by mid-July: stay tuned!