Under Waters 🌀🐚🐚
FRIENDS WITH COMPUTERS:
April Phillips, Jordan East, Pat Younis
19 February - 29 March
@pica_perth @perthfest
12-5 PM, Tues- Sun
11:13 mins (loop)
Complex Digital Object (moving image, sound, real-time body tracking, digital sculptures, photogrammetry scans, animation, particle systems), polyester tassels, cotton / polyester rugs, aluminium and polyvinyl.
2025 boorda yeyi Immersive Arts Commission Under Waters uncovers a speculative past of 500,000,000 (five hundred million) years ago when the majority of Earth’s surface was submerged in water. Streamed as a seamless loop, this moving image work operates as a portal—an all-access pass to a seemingly impossible dreaming— presenting ‘now’ in parallel to ‘long ago’ as a step to actualise deep time.
Extending the immense spatial and temporal scale of the work, Under Waters operates as a site for real-time play and interaction. The presence of the audience’s bodies mirror in the digital world, creating cause and effect in the unfolding scene. Immersed within the continuum of an ancient saltwater wonderland, audiences become inhabitants—activating this thriving world through movement and attentiveness.
The depths of the ocean floor present deep-water canyons, coral seas and rich kelp forests; an expansive and interconnected ecosystem. The slow propulsion through the deep reveals a rip, opening to a galactic sky: stars, nebula and infinite blackness—a reminder that deep oceans
and sky are connected as one; opposing points of truth that anchor the universe.
Under Waters is the inaugural recipient of PICA’s boorda yeyi Immersive Arts Commission. boorda yeyi, meaning ‘future now’ in Whadjuk Noongar language, is a program dedicated to expanding artistic practice through the use of technology, contributing to new ways of understanding, producing and experiencing contemporary art in Australia.
