Pay No Attention (2013)

Pay No Attention (2013) was an interactive work dependent on the participation of the viewers for its own content. The user would enter the exhibition space with a small light illuminating an area with just a microphone. As they move into the space of the microphone, they would see their image projected in minuscule form on the opposite wall. As they initiate sound into the microphone, their voice floods the space. The volume of their voice corresponds with the size of their image. As you will see in the videos below – it is both a humorous, discombobulating and narcissistic exercise in both viewing and performance. Without the enactment of voice or performance, the work ceases to exist.

Music and theatrical performance commonly generates a curious return to its creator – an image to us the viewers and listeners, of either absurdity or adoration. The expectation of this image is something that one may mirror upon themselves, enacting forms of the performance within their own domain. This work creates a direct link between viewer, creator and image – the three intertwined, unable to escape one another. This installation both enlarges and shrinks the role of the user simultaneously, placing their body behind a shroud but projecting their image, directed by voice, threefold.

Pay No Attention, Interactive Installation (Dimensions Variable) Exhibited as part of Video>Music at Bondi Pavilion curated by Matthew Hopkins, (2013) and MCA Art Bar, Museum of Contemporary Art (2013), curated by Tully Arnot.

Photograph from Video > Music (Bondi Pavilion)
Video from Art Bar (Museum of Contemporary Art)