Dodg'em

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This work, a collaboration installation with sound artist Philip Samartzis, consisted of two adult-sized pedal cars in which participants drive around an 'empty' gallery space, triggering a spatial soundscape of an unseen terrain as they go. Continuing to explore cultural representations of the evolutionary process of neoteny, this work uses computer technology and the humorous interface of a pedal car (big oversized toys) to ask an audience to re-think their expectations of what takes place within a gallery/museum space, where objects are usually fixed. This work explores whether an electronic participatory (interactive) art piece can provide a meaningful and immersive experience without the participant feeling awkward or overwhelmed by the perceived complexity. 'The act of driving through a blank and characterless space of triggered sounds immediately places the driver in identifiable, visually suggestible locations. In achieving this sense of presence, of vicarious location in an elsewhere that is in excess of the gallery, the effect of 'Dodg'em' is a compelling and hi-res as any 3D virtual world' (Tofts, Darrin, Interzone (2005) Media Arts). In this project, the space is visually empty and attention is not so much on the pedal cars, as on the physical absence of the imagined sonic space. Through this blind interaction of driving or searching an unknown terrain, the gallery simply serves as a matrix in which to reveal that 'other place'. Re-developed for the Interface festival in 2006, the work was originally conceived in 1999 and first exhibited at Gallery 101, Melbourne and subsequently toured Australia.