The Magnetic Quiet Zone

This event is part of MOSSO: music in motion

This is a free event.

Performances at 10am and repeated at 4.50pm

The Magnetic Quiet Zone (TMQZ) is an immersive, 35-minute (looped) audio-visual installation exploring the frozen sounds and stagnant silences, the strange atmospherics and dynamic forces operating at the margins of our planet. Drawing on the Antarctic research of sound artist Philip Samartzis, visual artist Martin Walch, and writer/composer Sean Williams, TMQZ uses field recordings, digital imaging and animation, and ambient music to render complex behaviours, vast spaces, material encounters and wild weather to express the uncanniness of the ice continent. The animated video comprising images captured at 150 second intervals over the 2017/18 austral summer provides a record of light and shadow, mutable weather, and the rhythm of human activity to distort the fabric of space and time.

SIGNIFICANCE

The ways people live and work in remote places such as Antarctica progressively resembles the broader contemporary experience, in which strict protocols and hyper-vigilance mitigates risk. The unpredictable nature of life in extremis that necessitates constant adaptation is in many ways how we live on the rest of the planet where our assumptions are regularly tested. The resilient communities who occupy these distant, fragile places provide models of resistance that can help deepen understanding of the impact of environmental dissonance. Artists and writers play an increasingly vital role in observing and recording the tension between climate, landscape, technology, and human action, to demonstrate the interconnectedness of things.

ARTISTS

Philip Samartzis, Professor in Fine Art (RMIT)
Martin Walch, Lecturer in Fine Art (UTAS)
Sean Williams, Discipline Lead, Creative Writing (Flinders)

TMQZ is produced through the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship program which hosted Samartzis in 2010 and 2016, Walch in 2017/ 2018, and Williams in 2017. TMQZ is created within the framework of the ARC-funded Discovery Project, “Creative Antarctica: Australian Artists and Writers in the Far South”.

NFSA visitor information at nfsa.gov.au/visit-us