Controlled Released

Derek Hart is currently undertaking a Connections Residency hosted by Hydro Tasmania, and is in the process of making a number of video works based on documenting water flow in rivers and lakes within the state's catchment areas. The works combine elemental time with the temporal tracking of two machines - the camera and an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), used by Hydro Tasmania to collect hydrology data.

Still in their early stages, Hart’s residency projects include situating the camera in the environment with the ADCP machine, effectively increasing its sensory range as it moves along rivers and around lakes.

Hart’s work explores the digital manipulation of the moving image and engages with phenomenological concerns of installation art. His approach to time-based media is informed by the international traditions of experimental film and video practices. With his residency projects it is the structural possibilities of the motion of water and its representation in media installation that is of particular interest to him. He intends the body of work to align with issues relating to the natural environment, in particular notions of species and habitat.

As residency hosts, Hydro Tasmania are providing access to technologies and processes of controlling and monitoring environmental flow, including field equipment at a number of sites across Tasmania, technicians and research staff.

Hart feels by undertaking this residency partnership that his engagement with staff at Hydro Tasmania is enabling his work to develop in ways he had not anticipated. “My ideas are interpreted in the light of their research activities which in turn stimulates other ways of thinking about my project,” Hart said.

Hydro Tasmania anticipates that Hart’s video components may potentially be of scientific value. Hart believes that through his conversations and interactions with the staff at Hydro Tasmania they are perceiving an extended context to their activities.

Hart’s work recently featured in the Dec-Jan 09 edition of Realtime magazine, to read more please visit Realtime

Below: Video work by Derek Hart, Wildwater, South Esk River (Up in Flames) 2009. Video courtesy of Derek Hart.

Wildwater, South Esk River (Up in Flames) from Derek Hart on Vimeo.