Astrojet – 2014

Astrojet was a locative media project by Melbourne based artist Zoe Meagher.
Produced by Field Theory under the banner of Site is Set, Astrojet was one of four projects in non traditional art spaces.
Zoe was a work colleague of mine at Museum Victoria and upon completion of my contract she asked if I would be interested working on her Astrojet project. Having had the pleasure of working alongside her and having seen some elements of her Goodbye CSIRAC project, I of course jumped at the chance.
From Zoe’s Website: Part bus tour, part audio guide, Astrojet takes you on an eerily familiar expedition to the secret location of Melbourne’s forgotten Astrojet Space and Science Centre.
The Astrojet building, located at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport represented a logistical challenge. Apart from the security issues working landside at an airport, any large projection would have to be negotiated thru airport management for safety reasons. This and the fact that the building is condemned, resulted in all projections and lighting effects into the building would have to be from outside the building. The fact that the buildings exterior sodium lights could not be turned off and the site had to be set and struck each night added a further technical challenge.
Utilising analogue slide projectors and simple lighting effects, the performer would operate each of the four internal projections which were timed to sync with the participants audio guide.
The final reveal moment, an animated projection of the original Lenton Parr sculpture, was achieved using a Barco projector hidden behind existing landscaping foliage projection mapped upon the building. After a dry tech run over one night, the performance ran over two nights in September.
Technical Information Astrojet site:
1 x Kodak SAV 2050 & 2 x Kodak Ektapro 7020 projectors from my own supply.
Strobe light, domestic lights, LED trowies.
Barco FLM HD20 supplied by Multimedia Events Australia.
Genset supplied by Eventpower.
Hyundai iload van supplied by Budget Rentals Footscray.
All performance images, sound and video content by Zoe Meagher.
Technical Producer: Ian Corcoran.
Technical Assistant: Jason Bond.
Site is Set Production Staff:
Producers: Anna Schoo & Lara Thoms.
Production Manager: Molly Whelan.
Photographic Documentation here by Bryony Jackson.
Main blog image by Ian Corcoran.
Video Documentation by Liz Dunn.