1991 :: Art Research and Development Fund

Of the 62 artists who applied to ANAT’s Art Research and Development Fund that year, 10 were successful: Charles Anderson, Simon Carroll, Joyce Hinterding, Csaba Szamosy, Paula Dawson, Sally Pryor, Noelle Janczewska, Linda Johnson, James Harley & Shiralee Saul, and Stephen Hennessey.

Joyce Hinterding’s experimental electro-acoustic work Siphon (pictured) explored the inherent qualities and characteristic sounds of electricity by sculpturally interpreting an electronic component within a sound-producing circuit.

Joyce explains, “this was a time when many people were tackling the building blocks of media and mediums; in my case electricity and the fabulously confusing water analogy was my starting point. I had been studying the Tafe electronics course when we were asked to repeat a turn of the century mathematical problem that calculated how much energy could be stored in a jar of water. This caught my imagination to such a degree that after calculating that I would need 300 jars to run a simple circuit, I set out to use this calculation to literalise the water analogy and the idea that energy flows. The result was Siphon, a work that gave the audience an experience of a literal filling and emptying of 300 glass jars with electricity. The entire room acted as and replaced a single component in the circuit, and gave agency to this invisible force through sound, and feeling as the room smelled and breathed with picofarads of electricity. “

 

Back