Open Air

"Open Air" is produced by Grayson Cooke in collaboration with Emma Walker and the music of The Necks. “Open Air” is visual music, a visual setting of the 2013 album "Open" by Australian cult band The Necks. It is also a form of creative earth imaging; it combines timelapse Landsat satellite imagery of Australia, with aerial macro-photography of the paintings and processes of Australian painter Emma Walker. Together, these two vastly different forms of aerial earth imaging combine to produce a complex picture of a changing planet.

The project has received a large number of accolades and press mentions;

• it was awarded the prestigious Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize at the South Australian Museum in December 2020;

• it won Best Experimental Film at the 2019 ATOM Awards in Melbourne;

• it was shortlisted for the 2018 Lumen Prize in the ‘moving image’ category;

• it has been purchased by the Australian Parliament House Art Collection;

• it was profiled online by NASA;

• myself and Emma Walker were interviewed in a podcast by dLux Media Arts;

• it was profiled by the team at the NCI, the National Computational Infrastructure;

• and it has shown widely around Australia, including at ACMI in Melbourne and at the Spectra Art/Science Conference in Adelaide.

About the Project

“Open Air” is a project produced by media artist Grayson Cooke, in collaboration with painter Emma Walker and with the music of The Necks. Through a partnership with Geoscience Australia, the project also uses Landsat satellite images of Australia from the Digital Earth Australia program.

This project seeks to creatively image the forces that shape the Earth. It uses aerial imaging on two vastly divergent scales to produce two different material manifestations of these forces; the forces of sedimentation, of precipitation, of the firing of the land, the pulsing of water courses, and of recent anthropogenic change as well, of urban sprawl and the cultivation of the land.

Firstly, the project features motion-controlled aerial photography of the paintings and processes of Emma Walker. Walker’s paintings are abstract but highly reminiscent of the Australian landscape, they feature carved, burnt topographies, rich ochre fields, and the flat expanse of salt pans. In this project we see these paintings in formation; the ground takes fire and burns, earth minerals like graphite, iron oxide and carbon – raw materials of paint and colour – flow down channels in marine ply like sediment towards the river mouth.

Set against these painted landscapes are time-lapse images of Australia as seen by Landsat satellites. Landsat satellites have been imaging the surface of the Earth for over 40 years. They circle the Earth in 99 minutes and return to the same place every 16 days. The image data generated on these orbits is used by researchers and the private sector to track environmental change over time.

“Open Air” releases these images for aesthetic, intellectual and emotional purposes, showing country as a living thing. We see the incredible pulsing of water through the Channel Country; the Diamantina River and Cooper Creek work like veins that pump water from the tropical north down to Kati Thanda Lake Eyre. We float down the Eyre Peninsula, down coastlines of ancient sediment, as the Southern Ocean pushes immense cloud formations across the land.

The 2013 album “Open” by The Necks provides the soundtrack for the project. At times sparse and dry, at others symphonic in its intensity, the music provides an immersive aural backdrop for thinking in to the phenomena that shape this continent. “Open Air” is a signature work and innovative synthesis of the materials of art, science and the Earth.

Screenings

• ACMI, Melbourne, Jan-March 2019. Lightwell screening program alongside Christian Marclay’s The Clock.

• (excerpt) “In the Dark”, The Cello Factory, London UK, January 2019. Curated by The Lumen Prize.

• Byron Theatre, Byron Bay NSW, February 2019.

• Watch This Space, Alice Springs, February 2019.

• Mount Vic Flicks, Mount Victoria NSW, June 2019.

• Lismore Regional Gallery, Lismore NSW, August-October 2019.

• Winner, Best Experimental Film, 2019 SAE Atom Awards, Melbourne, November 2019.

• National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, September 2018.

• “Spectra” conference public programme, Mercury Cinema, Adelaide, South Australia, October 2018. Selected by ANAT, the Australian Network for Art and Technology.

• “Unsettling Australia” Australian Studies conference, University of Queensland, December 2018.