Against the TimeBomb Clock with…

Sydney multi-media artist, Lukasz Karluk

Where does interactive installation work fit into digital media and where is it heading?
Lukasz: “Interactive installations create a completely immersive experience for a person. They transport the person into a unique environment where they can interact through technology in an audio/visual and even tactile sense. The ability to create an immersive and unique experience has seen interactive installations being created in the arts world. Although as technologies are becoming more available and cheaper and community groups build on the internet… the applications of interactive installations are being more commercial, a way of capturing the attention of a person in a fun and playful way and communicating a branded experience.”

If you could actually use TimeBomb as a time machine to go back in time, what’s one thing you would change and why?
Lukasz: “I would go back in time and meet my double, explain how I went back in time and convince him to come with me to grab another double. After a few hundred collections of self… there would be a whole army of me. I would then use this amazing power to create the world’s largest human pyramid.”

If you had unlimited resources what would be the one thing you’d like to create and why? Would materials would you use? What would it look like?
Lukasz: “I’d like to create an audio visual performance that would involve an entire city, probably at the resident’s expense. Projections are becoming bigger and bigger as seen with the Luminous festival lighting up the sails of the opera house. Imagine being able to control every building in the city. Switching it on and off like flashing pixels on a computer screen.”

Sometimes I look kind of silly when…
“I’m testing my interactive applications with other people around… waving my hands around and bopping my head as I’m testing… Sometimes people wave back which is always nice.” 

Sydney artist, Maddi Boyd

Personally, what’s the most fascinating aspect of the TimeBomb instillation for you?

Maddi: “Allowing the viewers into the creation of a painting. The development of an artwork over time would make an excellent subject for a reality TV show. So many intensely personal and controversial events lead to the final presentation of an artwork; some of these are ‘top secret’. This goes for the artworks in galleries as well as on the street. Street murals are even more exciting in this way. People go to jail. It’s about friendship and revenge. It’s about skill and fame. Mostly people only see the vandalism and give no thought to the story behind the artwork.”

Graff/urban art has come along way for the people of Sydney, where do you think it’s heading now and in the future?

Maddi: “Graff and urban art will always be something that people do for fun (or for their own reasons), and also as an expression of their immediate experience of urban life. In this sense, urban art will never cease to be relevant because, unlike high brow institutionalised art, it’s not about jumping through hoops and satisfying conventions, but actually being a part of the living city and responding to what’s happening around the artist.”
 

What about installation works, such as TimeBomb? The whole merging of digital with more traditional artistic mediums seems to be gaining more and more exposure. Where do you think this is heading?
Maddi: “Most artists today spend as much time researching or communicating online as anyone else and often more so because they are hyper-aware of subtle changes in culture. Art is always deeply involved with the status quo, and technology is inevitably integrated into everyday life nowadays. So, the integration of old-skool [sic] and nu-skool [sic] artforms is really quite natural. It’s really a merging of the minds to see what comes from excellence in the technique side of painting and the abstract ways of thinking in nu media. Each brings what the other does not understand to create an artwork that is mysterious and intriguing for everyone to explore.”