Biomass

PASSENGER (Australia)

PASSENGER is a 360 degree stop-motion VR film that tells the story of arriving in a new country to live. Your taxi driver, himself a migrant to Australia, navigates the new terrain with you, acting as your guide while also revealing small parts of his own story. PASSENGER recreates and investigates the geographic and visual dislocation of arriving somewhere unfamiliar and beginning the journey of finding a new home in a foreign land.  

Written, Directed and Animated by Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine
Produced by Philippa Campey
Principal funding from Screen Australia 

Dates & Times 3 – 8 Feb
Tue – Sun 10.30am, 12,1.30 & 3pm

Duration 45mins (experienced with The Man Who Couldn’t Leave)
Tickets $15

The Man Who Couldn’t Leave (Taiwan)

Within the walls of the former Green Island prison, political detainee A-Kuen tells the stories of imprisonment and persecution that happened in the 1950s in Taiwan. Among fellow inmates, frozen in time, he recounts his own experiences and those of his friend, A-Ching, who never made it out. Experience the time and place and the waiting, in hope, for a chance to keep the stories alive. 

Director Singing Chen 
Producer A-Ken 

Dates & Times 3 – 8 Feb
Tue – Sun 10.30am, 12,1.30 & 3pm

Duration 45mins (experienced with PASSENGER)
Tickets $15

Gondwana (Australia)

Gondwana invites you to a one-of-a-kind durational event, gently unfurling over five days. Immerse yourself in the world's oldest tropical rainforest, in a virtual, explorable representation of the Daintree in Far North Queensland, Australia. Like the rainforest itself, Gondwana is a system of possibilities. Weather, seasons and biodiversity shift and change as you encounter a vast ecosystem of ancient trees, rugged mountains and idyllic beaches. 

Over the course of the showing, the rainforest degrades, artistically rendering climate data projections up to the year 2090. However, the more time audiences spend with the forest, the more resilient it becomes. The collective act of bearing witness pushes back against seemingly inevitable decline. 

Gondwana is an immersive exhibition that can also be visited in VR, which can be booked in 20-minute sessions. 

Dates & Times 11 – 15 Feb
Wed – Sun
Exhibition 9.30am – 5pm
VR 10am – 4pm sessions every 30mins

Tickets
Exhibition Free event
VR $10

Embodied/Misembodied 

Join disabled artist Ben Joseph Andrews in a live-coded lecture performance unpacking biological and technological anatomies of movement as they expand and fall apart together.

Through personal storytelling, Embodied/Misembodied interrogates the promise of ‘seamless’ embodiment in virtual reality as a window into Ben’s experience with vestibular migraine, a chronic movement processing disorder. Ben narrates and codes the piece in real time, accompanied by a performer on stage in a VR headset. Expanding the artist’s award-winning VR work Turbulence: Jamais Vu, Embodied/Misembodied celebrates glitch and jank as a way to understand the beauty and fragility of our ever-moving world. 

Date & Time: Fri 13 Feb 6pm  
Duration 60mins
Tickets $15

Seeing Echoes in the Mind of the Whale (UK)

Seeing Echoes in the Mind of the Whale explores the sensory world of cetaceans and celebrates the multitude of life forms that make up our Earth’s oceans. By merging deep listening data, scientific insight, and artistic rendition, the artwork aims to create a multisensory experience that seeks to bridge the gap between human perception and the remarkable sensory abilities of whales, particularly their complex relationship with sound. 

Follow a bottlenose dolphin, a humpback whale and a sperm whale as they take a breath at the water’s surface before diving back into the deep blue. With each breath, the perspective shifts, allowing viewers to experience the world through the eyes and senses of these extraordinary animals. Through this shifting lens, the installation highlights the unique ways these species perceive their surroundings. 

Created in collaboration with Marshmallow Laser Feast ((Ersin Han Ersin, Barnaby Steel, Robin McNicholas) and Tom Mustill. 
With the scientific support of the UPC Bioacoustic Applications Laboratory. 

Commissioned by Fundación Telefónica and DHub (Disseny Hub Barcelona) 

Dates & Times: 26 Jan – 12 Jun
9.30am – 5pm daily
Tickets Free event

Presented with the Western Australian Museum

Image Luke Riley