Oliver Hull
Surface – Barrow Island
about the artwork
Surface – Barrow Island is a live simulation of the ocean surrounding Barrow Island controlled by a live machine learning weather system, drawing on historical data and predictive modelling. The weather data controls all aspects of the simulation, not just the weather and water conditions, and also directs the virtual cameras and transitions between shots. The predicted weather changes of Barrow Island are transformed into a film, which changes and flows like the weather itself.
The work connects the viewer to Barrow Island as a virtual reality as it self-directs through predicted weather.
Produced with the assistance of Black Shuck Co-operative.
artist statement
about the artist
Oliver Hull
Born Boorloo | Perth, Western Australia
Lives and works Naarm | Melbourne
Oliver Hull’s practice grapples with landscapes as messy assemblages of media representations, ecologies and histories. His works are informed by research of sites where these categories knit. Often incorporating digital media, he combines methods that track, trace, simulate and sense, with more poetic or ambiguous approaches of knowing. This is done with the goal to think through messy relationships more clearly, not necessarily to make them easier to understand, but maybe to see them again.
