Geometries of Attention is a collaborative project by René Christen and Astrid Lorange, comprising three interactive installations. Each work looks at how a ‘poem’ might be produced through the collaborative processes of noticing, engaging and playing. When a participant interacts with a work — touches, manipulates, provokes, corrupts — the work ‘happens’. Without interactivity, the poems exist only as fields of potential.

In one work, five poem-objects are the playthings for an experiment in attractive and repulsive dynamics. In another, a sound poem is generated from the touch of fingertips across a wall’s surface. In the third, four FM transmitters provide the material for an improvisational headphone radiophonics (tuning between four channels — a blue coat, a parasite, a Philadelphia and a lovepoem). Together, the three works tune the geometries of attention so that inquisitive impulses like ‘what is this?’ and ‘how does this work?’ and ‘how is this meaninful?’ — questions that are central to our playful interrogation of the world –  become the compositional impulses of poetry.

René Christen has designed and built the soft and hardwares for each work, and Astrid Lorange has composed the poetry works. This project is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts’ Emerging Writers/Illustrators Initiative.

Opening Wednesday 3 February 6 - 8 pm

Exhibition runs through Thursday 5 February until Sunday 7 February