Strategy
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Description
Outdoor Art Drive-In 86 was launched as a one-off pop-up as a – Go Big or Go Home or Head South – strategy to start connecting the local with the global and level the playing field for women and regional centers.
In early 1986 I secured sponsorship from Telecom Australia for 20 pages on the Viatel Videotex Service and sponsorship from Visionhire Australia for the dedicated videotex terminal and modem which I tested and explored while traveling across Australia throughout April 86 for the O’Flate National Art Safari.
On returning to Brisbane I knuckled into teaching myself how to use the videotex editing system and produced the small interactive database titled OFlate Studios which was then aligned with a physical site (Ezy Park Car Park) located on the corner of Charlotte and Edward Streets, Brisbane City for the Outdoor Art Drive-In, ’86.
I chose Videotex as the online building block rather than the endlessly vertical-scrolling bulletin boards because of the hyperlinks, graphic capability, and to me the 3d quality of the structure. Videotex allowed designers to work out from a structured central information base guiding users with menus and options via hyperlinks to move through the site interact and retrieve information.
And even though the graphic capacity was black and white and Cuisenaire Rod chunky blocky and unwieldy it was important to see the potential for the alignment of physical and digital spaces and to play with the hyperlinks in a way that could lean into the digital world of conversation, connection, and engagement that was clearly ahead of us.
It was at this time that I started to feel that information could have a material 3 dimensional form but I was a long way from even beginning to understand this and the sheer logistics of pulling the building blocks together and into alignment consumed me.
Outdoor Art Drive-In became the steppingstone base template for building the ’88 InterFace Project.
Building Blocks – physical / digital:
The building blocks for this project were: The Ezy Park Car Park, Viatel, Telecom Australia’s National Videotex Service, the facades of highrise buildings and the electronic display board in the Queen St Mall. The elements included the lighting display on the Qld Health Building, the highrise projections, the video installation, artwork and performance.
Physical site:
Outdoor Art Drive-In 86 was staged in the Ezy Park Car Park on the corner of Charlotte St & Edward St, Brisbane City. The surrounding buildings housed the Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Metro Arts, and Queensland Health.
The car park wall of the IMA was used for the Qld Artists Video Installation. For this installation, I secured 3 x monitors to the wall displaying video interviews and performances I had collated with 15 Brisbane-based artists.
Michelle Andringa installed her work titled ‘HeartStar’ to the wall (documentation below). Katie White conducted a live welding exercise in the car park (documentation not available).
The Qld Health Building was used to illustrate the transmission and flow of information via the O’Flate Studio site on Viatel, Telecom Australia’s National Videotex Service – by opening and closing window blinds to create the image of the ascending and descending arrows.
Images sourced from local artists, performers, and arts organizations were projected from the rooftop of the Metro Arts building onto an adjacent highrise building.
Digital sites:
O’Flate Studios on Viatel, Telecom Australia’s Videotex Service:
The digital landscape in ’86 offered online Bulletin Boards, text-based scrolling information systems and videotex, interactive text, and graphic-based systems. Videotex is now described as a centralized and focused system providing curated content to subscribers while online bulletin boards are defined as decentralized, user-driven community-based systems centered around specific interests and topics with users creating their own discussions, sharing information, and participating in conversations.
As an artist wanting to bridge the local with the global visual interactivity was essential. Videotex allowed users to navigate through menus, select options via hyperlinks and retrieve specific information from a central database. These basic structural principles are the foundations of the internet we know today.
Electronic Display Boards Queen St Mall:
Access had been gained to the Electronic Display boards in the Queen St Mall. Adam Wolter worked with the in-house technician to upload the first art image to the display. Two years later the boards were once again utilized for the InterFace Project.
