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| Viewers taking in the latest addition to the public art collection. |
Town Hall
Gallery curator, Mardi Nowak, and her trusty new assistant, Marion Piper, are
preparing to help launch a fantastic new Public Art Work outside of the City of
Boroondara Council offices in Camberwell in March. The artist of this
intriguing sculpture, North Balwyn resident Anderson Hunt, sat down with Mardi
and Marion to have a conversation about Public Art, Language and the
frustrations of predictive text.
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Anderson Hunt
[AH]: When I was originally designing the work, it sprang from looking at
books and libraries. Originally, that was one of my first proposals ... to
build a book sculpture, or something that related to the library, but maybe not
as literal as that.
Mardi Nowak
[MN]: Didn't we google 'book art' around that time?
AH: Yeah, I do
that every time now, just to see what is out there, but also to try and find
something that is a bit more unique to this site. The underlying thing with
this site was the building and how grand it was - this sort of monumental
classicism, which is what it was called when it was built. It was almost pushed
off the street, it was a bit untouchable.
The thing about the development is that it's really opened it up to
people: that amphitheatre [on the corner of Reserve Rd and Camberwell Rd] started
that 'typewriter' kind of thinking, where it looks a little bit like a
typewriter. The actual structures within a typewriter pay homage to the design
structures of this old building.
But in the really crucial part about trying to tie the sculpture into
current day life, text and language became really important. When we go back to
original scribbling, we went from hieroglyphics to script...to words and books
and stories, and now we've come full circle back to kids sending smiley faces,
hash tag this, we're at somewhere, it's all that sort of contemporary thinking.
(above, artist Anderson Hunt showing off the blue stone keys)
Marion Piper
[MP]: It's like modern hieroglyphics?
AH: Yeah, it's
sort of like a modern day hieroglyphics. I'm really interested in the evolution
of language and text and how things will change in another twenty or thirty
years - and I mean it won't be long, so if we go back 20 years, who was
texting? Who was doing this?
When you look at this old building, you wonder if the sounds of
typewriters are still in the walls because a typing pool - if you've ever walked into one - is like a war zone
of noise. But everyone was down there happily - well maybe not all happily - reciting or copying things into type. It was part
of a job.
I think the work speaks on a few different levels and hopefully the
public will get some little part of it. A lot of kids won't recognise the
typewriter hammers but others, they'll definitely recognise the font, you know,
they'll know that's the '@' key or the '#'. I've also included the 'command
loop' because it goes back to pre-Christian times. It's a very significant
symbol - it's the ancient symbol for infinity.
So that goes back beyond the typewriters, which were from the 1960s and the
text, and that is into the future. So
it's a little bit of everything.
MN: I always
think in my reading of the hammers and keys - because we've put them the other
way around - about the discussion we had that there's a connection there...It's
a comment on communicating a bit more, and that's part of that whole
redevelopment here, is creating a place where people can meet and have
conversation, engage and interact, and I think that Typing Pool does that in a nice way.
AH: Definitely,
that's a link and there are lots of ways we can tie the work into the site, but
obviously there's the blue stone - there's something pretty significant about a
big rock. It's got this sort of text that relates to the work, but it also
relates it to the building. To change it around and have it backwards, people
tend to think about why it is like that.
I wasn't commissioned to build a typewriter, so we're not copying things
that have been done before. I mean as artists you tend to try and change things
slightly so people start creating a little story in their heads about how
things exist, about why they're there.
MP: And it also
takes something that's quite ephemeral, and on a short time frame - the symbols
and language - and gives a nice weight to them, which I think text and language
doesn't have any more. We're missing that hit of the hammer keys...
AH: Exactly.
It's like a passing phase, isn't it? You wonder where we're heading: it's all
happening at such a rapid rate that the minute you go bronze or blue stone,
it's a permanent thing. Bronze will be there for three and a half thousand
years, and I'm not sure if the steel component will still be there, but the
blue stone, well, we know how old that is.
There's something really nice about permanent work that's actually
really substantial. It's about a fleeting moment in history. At 2013,
everyone's got a web address - "at" somewhere - they're hash tagging
this, that and the other. I still have to learn how to Tweet; I still don't
know how to do that. I haven't even blogged yet, so, we're just learning to
iPad at home and even that's pretty tricky!
[MN
and MP laugh]
You know, it really is for the people, the voice of the community. I
arrived at the title Typing Pool
after seeing video footage of what looks like acres of women typing away, just putting
all this stuff down. You look at the size of libraries now you wonder if we
build modern libraries they could probably be 3ft square...filled with USB
sticks!
MN: There is
such a change with libraries now that, looking here at Camberwell Library, we
don't acquire as many books as we used to. There are still a lot of loans but
there is a move towards eBooks and just what a library is has changed too. It's not just going, borrowing something and
taking them home, it's also people using the computers or studying.
AH: It's an
access point for the public to come in...
MP: And there's
not this necessity to print everything as much anymore. In terms of books, in
terms of messages, in terms of leaving a note for somebody - you don't have to
do that anymore. You can just send them a text message.
AH: Yeah,
certainly. I battle with it daily - most of my designs are still collage,
paper-cuts, and scribbles. You get a shot of a site and then come in and put
your ideas down. I rarely design on a computer mainly because I don't
understand the language of 3D modelling. I'm finding even with this project -
just getting the files done for the fonts in bronze - we've had to do those as
a Rhino 3D file and have bits of ply wood cut at different sizes and stacked
them all up so we ended up with a conical shaped mould. It's still an old process
but we're using some computer technology in it.
If I had been born twenty years later I think I'd be doing purely
computer design work - laser cuts and the like - there's a lot of it now and I
feel I'm part of the old school. You can still create something that's got a
modern twist to it, so it will be really exciting to see them in and see how
people relate to them.
MP: Definitely! What
do you want people to take away from Typing
Pool?
AH: I think in
my own mind it will be successful on a number of different levels. It may not
suit everyone's taste, but you get that with public sculpture. I think the more
I've been doing this sort of work the more you realise that you can't please
everyone out there, but you maybe make a significant change in the way that
people think about art and its role in community.
Look, you only have to travel through Europe to see that art and culture
has been a big part of a lot of people's lives. But we've come here and it's
like a clean slate (Australia) and we refer to Aboriginal art a lot in our work
but we don't really use it because we're not allowed to.
We're creating our own identity and these public art projects can really
be significant if councils are prepared to go with something a little bit edgy
or a little bit alternative, rather than a statue. We've all seen Burke and
Wills in middle of the city and the yawn-fest, but there are some great
projects along the Eastlink Freeway. They're commissioning incredibly bold, big
new works that are going to absolutely mess with people's minds. The hotel out
there [Hotel by Callum Morton, 2008] is
one of the classics where people are just so annoyed that they can't stay there
or go there or drive into it. I love how art work can affect people in that
way.
I guess these [elements of Typing
Pool] will be quite overpowering because they're large and they'll be
overhanging, and people will walk under them. But maybe they'll take something
away from the building about their role and how we evolve with our language and
our methods of communication.
I mean, we've come a long way since the days of two cans and a piece of
string - but now I can hardly understand some texts sent by young kids because
it's all code.
MP: Right now
too, there's a push for the whole "vintage is cool" thing, so maybe
the work will tap into a bit of that popularity?
AH: Hopefully.
The minute you talk about typewriters, people tell you stories about all the
ones they've had, or what their memories were, or how they used to pinch dad's
typewriter or get it jammed. Or how they loved waiting for the bell to ding at
the end of the row.
Cam, who I share my studio with (at Down Street Studios in Collingwood),
both of his parents were journalists, so his life was inundated with the noise.
When computers came out he could sleep! He wouldn't be woken up by his dad
upstairs hammering away on the latest story.
It's really about the evolution of language and text and I can't wait to
see where we end up. In the old days, you used to think about having walkie
talkies on your wrist. But now, you see people walking around talking to
themselves down the street, with a Bluetooth stuck on their ear like they're on
Star Trek! We are at that stage now.
MN: That's where
the voice to text stuff kind of freaks me out, because I have it on my phone -
it translates a voicemail to a text - and just how it converts it can be very
interesting!
AH: Yes,
pre-emptive text - you can get into a lot of trouble with that. Don't press
send until you've read it at least three times!
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