Interactive designs by postgraduate students in the Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts led by studio master Dr. Lian Loke will explore the theme of excavating the future in an interactive installation. The Old Darlington School managed by the Sydney Conservatorium, will offer the backdrop for the interactive pieces, with the mirrored history of play, of industriousness, and of creativity.

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Ghost[s] and the[ir] machines evokes the experience of Cockatoo Island in Sydney’s Harbour through design elements such as time, place and occupied space in comparison to former and current inhabitants. Interactive instruments will produce a means for participants to sift through the past to pave a way forward, and excavate towards the future as a way of making sense of the past. Their works make strange the perception and remembrance of space by equipping participants with technology for bodily interaction with the space. The design elements from Cockatoo Island are pulled through and remixed in the Old Darlington School to form contact surfaces between Cockatoo Island’s history, the Old Darlington School, and the participants.

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The result of a body probe method, in discovering the elements of the space, involved trace-making and strange or dislocated play in these dark, decorative, industrial, and apparently haunted spaces. Curator Deborah Turnbull aimed for the design theme to re-create a similar environment as a backdrop for the students’ interactive designs, with the theme of ghostly traces and how they affect interactivity tangentially as a medium and in terms of the tools they are creating experience with.



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Exhibiting Designers:

Chia Yuan Chang | Stephen Davis | Stephanie Fynn | Geng Hu | Wen Hua | Youngdong Kim | Mirinda Kusrisuwam | Congshan Lai | Chris Law | Pukkawat Leesawan | Sukij Lertpradist | Shumei Li | Xueshen Liu | Anna Malapira |Ariel Miao | Maddi Milasas | Bryan Ma | Jon McEwan | Heather McKinnon | Claudia Nunez Pacheco | Lavie Sak | Natinee Srikasumbun | Hanlin Tang | Yoko Tomishima | Michael Tortley | Jazz Trinos | Roven Yu | Fan Wang | Jing Wang | Yao Zhao | Ariel Zhou | Cindy Zhou | Kyle Zhu



Special Thanks:

Thank you to Rob Saunders, Baki Kocaballi, and Tom Rivard for their interaction design and coding expertise. We would also like to thank the Conservatorium of Music for their generous use of the Old Darlington School, in particular Cynthia Marin. Thank you, also, to the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, in particular the Design Lab, the Communications and Engagement Group, the Workshop and the DVS Staff for their support and assistance in realizing this exhibition. And last but not least, thanks to the Creativity and Cognition Studios, UTS, Stephanie Fynn, Claudia Nunez Pacheco, and Chris Law.