Perth Voice Interactive

HISTORY and technology mingle in a new innovative artwork on Perth’s King Street.

Media artist Sohan Ariel Hayes has created “6D” shifting projections that appear in a shopfront along the glitzy shopping strip.

Hayes says his work was inspired by a fleeting moment in nearby Wolfe Lane.

“I was working in an artists’ studio off Wolfe Lane and found an old newspaper article from the 1930s about some German aviators lost up north, missing 45 days before indigenous trackers found them,” he says.

“In this created narrative you see a man and his labradoodle (mine, actually) called Reuben, looking out into the same storm which took that plane down 80 or so years ago.”

6D City 6 uses a tracking algorithm which, depending on the viewer’s vantage point, merges fragments to form moving portraits.

Perth lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi says she’s pleased the city is going all Blade Runner.

“There are so many ways art can impact people’s experience of place,” she muses.

“When an artist connects with a place and is able to share that artistic vision, the rest of us get to discover the city anew.

“We ask artists to consider the built and natural environment while engaging people in the city in unusual and surprising ways and it’s exciting to see people’s reactions to that.”

6D City 6 is part of four TRANSART temporary public art projects shown during the Winter Arts Season.

A map of TRANSART locations is available at the i-City kiosk in the Murray St Mall.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK