Wesley Dowling

Field 2022, interactive floor projection.

Exhibited at Hume Winter Lights Festival 2022, Broadmeadows VIC.

View Field installation here

Field is an interactive floor projection made up of a repeating grid of lines that reacts to the presence and movement of people. Located in the bike cage at the Hume Winter Lights Festival, the artwork tracks the motion of participants as they walk through the space, forming distortions in the grid lines by their detected presence. The motion of the participants forms varying patterns that allow both the audience and the machine to collaborate in dialogue to produce an ever-changing artwork.

This artwork demonstrates the rise of computer vision which are new technologies that help computers “see” and understand the content of digital images such as photographs and videos. Computer vision technologies are fuelling many current innovations such as automated vehicles, robotics, and facial recognition technology. They are also increasingly being commercialized to analyse and profile into categories based on age, gender, location, to precisely target advertisements. This artwork playfully uses these new surveillance technologies to reveal to the viewer some of their inner workings and ubiquity.

Network 2021, website, interactive projection

Exhibited at Knox Immerse Festival 2021, Melbourne.

Exhibited at Colour Open Air v.2, Collingwood Yards, Melbourne.

Exhibited at Digital City of Canada Bay Digital Gallery, Rhodes.

View Installation Documentation here

Interact with Network here

Network is an interactive website that accumulates the window sizes of web browsers that visit the site and transforms them into an endless scrolling feed.

Site visitors can contribute to the work by clicking or tapping on-screen. The size of the user's browser window is captured and transformed into colourful window panels that users can explore by scrolling. The artwork then accumulates to progressively become an archive of all of the past web-browsers who have interacted with the website.

The artwork was developed during COVID-19 lockdown in recognition and response to doomscrolling - the act of addictively scrolling through endless news and social media feeds and consuming bad news regarding the pandemic. By seeking assurance to gain a sense of preparedness and control during times of uncertainty, doomscrolling sets up a feedback loop of continually drawing people back to the news and scrolling yet again. This transient assurance gained by reading the news worsens anxiety over time.

The artwork explores the soothing compulsion of doomscrolling by perpetually enticing the viewer with the possibility of something new appearing in the feed. The movement and positions of the browser windows are constantly recycled and updated as the user scrolls, merging and overlaying with previous user interactions. This generates an endlessly changing stream of information, and unique artwork for each audience to observe.

Iris 2021, website, interactive projection

Exhibited at Past Presents Futures for the Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2021

Interact with Iris here

Iris is a reactive website that captures and warps webcam video into halo-like patterns when activated by the motion of the viewer.

Colour in a digital image is created through the additive blending of three primary colours; red, green, and blue. This artwork extracts the colour information data from the webcam into separate colour channel layers. These layers are then transformed, distorted, and recombined when activated by the motion of the viewer which produces ever-changing filament structures.

Iris is part of a series of web-based works that I developed during the Centre for Projection Art Residency Program in 2020. During the residency, I researched and created interactive projection works that would allow both the audience and the machine to collaborate in dialogue to produce a completely unique artwork. I also investigated how the projection of web-based artworks in public spaces can become site-responsive works that engage with the merging of physical and virtual spaces afforded by digital technologies such as network infrastructure and mobile devices.

Commissioned for PAST PRESENTs FUTUREs, Gertrude Street Projection Festival, 21st to 25th July 2021.

Proudly curated by Jacob Tolo, this year we hit fast forward to 500 years into the future, asking artists for speculative visions far beyond the now and to consider the importance of constructs such as colour, race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, class and nationality. People and our environments are the impetus for this year's projects. How are they manifested in your future? What have you managed to take with you and what have you left behind in this new utopia? Or has it all gone to hell and you want to warn us all of Skynet!?

Realness 2021, website, outdoor screen installation.

Exhibited at Bunjil Place for the Midsumma Festival 2021

Exhibited at Encounters with Incomprehension, The Wrong Biennale, 2021.

Interact with Realness here

View Realness installation here

Realness is a new work, commissioned by Bunjil Place for the Midsumma Festival, from emerging queer artist Wesley Dowling with sound design by Liam Power. Realness is an interactive, participatory digital artwork that samples pixels and recorded audio from the webcams of user's devices. The artwork is displayed on the Bunjil Place Outdoor Screen where visitors to the site can interact with the work using their mobile phone. The artwork accumulates, fragments, and overlays the captured data and user interactions to create an ever-changing generative audiovisual experience.

Colour pixels in a digital image are created through the additive blending of three primary colours; red, green, and blue. When a person interacts with the work, this colour information is extracted into separate red, green, and blue colours and then merged with other people's pixel data to create new hues. The audio is created through a similar process in which the artwork records, processes, and merges sound fragments from users to generate the soundtrack.

The work disrupts the visual recognition of the photographic image through fragmentation. This method is used in the work to confuse how we interpret image as we are all recognised and categorised through photography. Realness attempts to question the link between the photograph and the real, and to open up a space where queer readings and forms of being can emerge.

Mosaic 2020, website, site-responsive projection

Exhibited for Holocenter Light Windows, Collingwood Yards, May 2020.

Exhibited for City of Stonnington: Light In The Dark, Nov 2020.

Interact with Mosaic here

View Light Windows installation here

Mosaic is a reactive web-based site-responsive work that was developed during the Centre for Projection Art Residency Program and exhibited as part of the Holocenter Light Windows exhibition. Digital technologies, such as network infrastructure and mobile devices, have brought about redefinitions of public space which have now become merged virtual and physical spheres. The work acknowledges this new condition of public space by fusing the virtual windows of the web browser to the physical architecture of the Collingwood Yards building through projection.

The Mosaic website accumulates the history of the browser window sizes that access the site. The browser window dimensions create stained-glass moving panels that produce an ever-changing generative colour field. The physical site is activated by the projection of the shifting composition through the window, and the work will continue to evolve during the exhibition. Viewers can contribute to the work by visiting the website via a desktop or mobile device. Colourful window panels will appear on-screen and on the projected work in the area where the site visitor clicks or taps.

Code 2019, website, multi-channel installation.

Exhibited at Press-Refresh.net The Wrong Biennale, Nov 2019.

Exhibited at Sightings & Listenings Graduate Exhibition, RMIT, Melbourne, Dec 2019.

Finalist in the Midsumma and Australia Post Art Award, No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne, Jan 2020.

Interact with Code here

View gallery installation here

Code (2019) is an online generative work that fragments and transforms photographs into pixelated flowing colour. Face detection algorithms capture the viewer's image as a red, green and blue subpixel array. The image is then sampled to initialize and produce an ever-changing generative colour field through the application of noise. The work occupies a liminal queer space that oscillates between states of photographic representation and abstraction. The shifting composition is an outcome of research into how queering can be used to identify and subvert normative ideological assumptions in computational image-making. Queering is used as a mode of resistance to scrutiny and surveillance by distorting the camera’s visual taxonomies through which people are recognized and regulated. The work undermines visual recognition to find a more open and variable mode of rendering that disrupts societal norms and essentialized notions of identity.

Raster 2019, Single Channel video, loop. Coded with Processing.

Exhibited at No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne, Feb 2019.

Exhibited at First Site Gallery, Melbourne Apr 2019.

View gallery installation here

Photographs were once recognized as the epitome of truth. Now photographic information can be manipulated via software to create images that can be an indistinguishable simulation. Raster considers the malleability of the electronic image by transforming the pixel information of an AI generated photograph of a human into flowing abstraction. The work explores how our experience of the world is increasingly based on potentially manipulated information via images, through screens and virtual media rather than tangible reality.

Flow 2018, interactive web project

Exhibited at QueerTech.io Midsumma, Melbourne, January 2019.

Interact with Flow here

Flow is an interactive web project that explores the fluid malleability of the electronic image by transforming the homogeneous generality of the digital screen into flowing abstraction. The work captures the image of the viewer and then deforms it using physics modeling of fluid mechanics. Through this project I was interested in queering the photographic medium by distorting the camera’s visual taxonomies through which people are recognized and regulated into abstraction that can be manifested without recourse to the representation of bodies.

Proof, 2018, interactive projection installation.

Exhibited at West Projections, Footscray, August 2018.

Exhibited at Hyper Copy, Albert Street Gallery, Brunswick, February 2019.

Exhibited at A Strange Space, Collingwood Yards for Midsumma Festival, April 2021.

View installation documentation here

Proof considers the malleability of the electronic image by creating images of viewers that emerge out of clouds of random data noise. The work explores how our experience of the world is increasingly based on potentially manipulated information via images, through screens and virtual media rather than tangible reality. We are currently in a period of transition from print-based media which was knowledge delivered in a fixed, stable format to a virtual malleable form. As we become more seduced by the screen and its endlessly transformable content, we seem to be entering into a confusing battle between opposing forces of truth vs. falsehood. How can we know what is true?

Presence/Absence 2017, interactive installation

Exhibited at the 2017 Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) Graduate Exhibition.

This video installation examines human-machine interaction by projecting computer generated silhouettes of the viewer's body. The shadow of the viewer is captured with infrared cameras using motion detection, processed in Max/MSP and then projection mapped onto acrylic panels. The work explores how these shadow representations are predicated on their physical relation to the material world, yet through projection, the image as index is transformed into illusion.

Spectres, 2016, colour high definition video, loop

Exhibited in the Between Realms Group Show at First Site Gallery, Melbourne, March 2017.

In the last twenty years, there have been major technological revolutions within photography. Due to the increase in accessibility and usage of contemporary technology, photographs have now dematerialized from objects to digital information in which the image is reconstructed onto the screen. Spectres explores how we are interacting with the screen and the immateriality of the digital image itself.

Paradox, 2017, four channel video installation, colour high definition video, loop.

Exhibited in the 2Q18 group show at Testing Grounds, Melbourne, February 2018.

Paradox is a four channel video installation that explores the malleability of the electronic image and its effect on photographic veracity.