Fables From The Threshold

In 2016, we launched our inaugural exhibition Fables From the Threshold (FABLES). A highly participatory collection of interactive artworks, the creative technology exhibition challenged artists and audiences to search for new ways of understanding the future through interactivity. Our goal was to give the local creative community and the general public a chance to explore first-hand how emerging technologies will change the way we understand and interact with the world.

The interactive artworks featured in Fables From The Threshold did not seek to answer how interactivity can best be used, but rather explore its ability to forge new territory in an increasingly digital future. Proving that the potential of interactive technology extends past advertising stunts and marketing applications, these experimental artworks invited audiences to actively participate in the creation of new stories that pushed the limits of what’s possible.

An interactive artwork from Eve Burchfield and Yuchao Wu, Delve examined the value of nature  as technology advances into almost all aspects of our lives. Driven by user interaction with a projection environment through a Kinect, the creative technology installation encouraged audiences to become conscious of the meaningful connections that could be lost without nature, reinforcing that if it’s not in our plans at present it won’t exist in our future.

Anti-Game was a virtual reality installation from Liam Stephens and Jack Condon that explored and redefined how we see ‘video games’. While seeming at first to be a simple game with a simple outcome, as players continued through the experience they were forced to question the role of their interaction and its consequences outside the digital world.

An experiment designed to both parody and analyse the relationship between audience and technology, audience and developer, and even developer and technology, Anti-Game was intended to subvert traditional video game tropes to ultimately manipulate audience preconceptions about the core function of interactive media.

Lukasz Karluk’s Streams was a generative video display that combined the artist’s fascination with contemporary Australian Indigenous art with his experimentation in line integral convolution (LIC), a mathematical technique used for visualising flows. Created through a process of charging invisible particles to create a field of flowing lines, the interactive artwork saw graphical motifs animate in an ever-changing design of streaming geometry.

Nicky Tunpitcha’s Dollhouse was an engaging multi-sensory experience that used virtual reality to challenge how we view the world. Juxtaposing the idea of a traditional dollhouse against a fragile paper construction of virtual reality, the creative technology installation asked the viewer to question how information is given to us in a world where everything is recorded and manipulated to someone’s point of view or agenda.

Based on the idea that ‘everyone’s brain is identical – but every mind is unique’, Mind Over Matter was an exploratory interactive artwork questioning the concept of human thought and decision-making. Created by Alia Madkhul and William Stewart, the creative technology installation used a fun yet simple game to demonstrate the duality of our mind and brain as conceptually separate yet inextricably linked.

Kaleidoscope Chandelier was an interactive installation from Renzo Larriviere and Simone Chua. Changing the light projected from the structure according to audience interactions with its spinning levers, the reimagined chandelier’s industrial design and geometric projections combined into a mesmerizing creative technology experience.

Millions of factors influence a person’s ability to visually observe something. In Perspectives, Richard Wong used mixed media sculpture to explore the possibilities of an altered visual reality. Inviting audiences to step back and see the world around them in a different way, this experimental interactive artwork explored the myriad ways that our personality, background and biology change what and how we see.