Animation Dances with Percussion: Sound and Vision Interlocked in Australia

Abstract

A s part of the larger Queensland's Jammin' Festival of music, a number of interdisciplinary works were staged in May at the Arbour Wall, a thirty-foot outside wall of the Queensland College of Art (QCA) Gallery at its relatively new campus on the river at Brisbane's Southbank. Percussion students from the Queensland Conservatorium are merely metres down the road from the QCA campus. Both colleges are now parts of Griffith University, traditionally noted for encouraging interdisciplinary experimentation in its curricula. To set the scene, the improvisation Arpeggio aimed to reflect and comment on the immediate environment of river environment. Brisbane's Southbank is similar to the generic dream emanating from the Parisian Leftbank or perhaps the London Southbank arts mecca. The atmosphere is leisure, pleasure, culture, and entertainment in all forms, within a tropical paradise nestled amongst landscaped palms and frangipanis. Tanned swimmers dive from shimmery white sands into impossibly free blue pools, an incongruous foreground for the north shore skyscraper backdrop. A multicultural array of restaurants and galleries reside on the river boardwalks and surrounding streets. On the north end, Southbank is comprised of various cultural buildings: the Queensland State Library, the site, pending construction, of the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, the Queensland Art Gallery itself (home to the Asia Pacific Triennial), and a mutiplex of theatres called the Cultural Centre of Performing Arts. Most of the designs exhibit the cool minimalism of International-style architect Robyn Gibson. The new gallery's plan introduces a contrast with more peculiarly localised Brisbane flavor of shady overhangs and verandahs, pertinent to the summer swelter. ARCHITECTUS + DAVENPORT CAMPBELL are the selected architectural team, which features the design partnership of Queenlanders Lindsay and Kerry Clare for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/qgma /default.htm).