Signature of water

Signature of water was an electronic and online work which was produced for the Waterworks exhibition at Goulburn Regional Gallery as a joint project by Stephen Cassidy and visual artist Deborah Faeyrglenn.

This work was a multi-arts project, applying writing, visual and design skills to produce electronic creative media, such as websites, hyper-fiction and animations. It was a small part of the shared task of facing up to life on our dry continent.

and liquid barely licks the ground

It was a set of interlinked, interactive websites and Shockwave movies which explored multiple aspects of water and the meaning it has in our lives and the lives of our communities. It ranged from short, minimalist animations, using cartoons, to hyperfiction drawing on the styles of crime novels. It was a mix of poetry, storytelling, images and sounds which was heavily influenced by the styles of popular culture and the urban and rural landscapes around us.

The animations were part of a series produced from 2004-2009 created in Flash software, as part of experimental work with moving images, sound and text. With the publisher withdrawing support for this software, it is now difficult to play the animations. 

The simplest way to play them is to use replacement software Ruffle, which is open source software which emulates Flash. Visit my website http://people.myplace.net.au/~sccp/, then from the list displayed, right click on the animation you wish to play and save it to your own device. Then open the Ruffle demo file, https://ruffle.rs/demo/ and find the downloaded animation on your device and it will play.

Signature of water includes many different animations contributing to the overall work:

Brown mud.swf
Civilisation.swf
Downtrodden.swf
Flashing words.swf
Ghost.swf
Green water.swf
H2O.swf
Marsh.swf
Moving clouds.swf
Moving lines.swf
Sink.swf
Small planet.swf
Storm.swf
Swirling grass.swf
Transition.swf
Unstill water.swf
Water and shadows.swf

© Stephen Cassidy and Deborah Faeyrglenn, 2005

See work from other exhibitions at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery:

Conversations group exhibition, 2004
A collaborative exhibition of writers and visual artists

State of origin
Multimedia piece developed with visual artist, Deborah Faeyrglenn, State of origin looked at where we come from, where we go next and where we truly belong. In this work the writer and visual artist combined word, image and computer technology to make visual music. Words and images moved across the computer screen, with no fixed address, State of origin.

The lost art of conversation
Installation, developed with visual artist, Deborah Faeyrglenn, on words, meaning, reflection and infinite (or at least, partial) regression. Three tall thin vertical mirrors stand against the wall, covered in bursts of words. Three matching paper shadows flow out from the wall along the floor. Words on the mirrors flutter and blur into shadows, The lost art of conversation.

balloon
A fictional narrative work in the form of a website, the website as writing. About the adventures of a refugee from the big city who sets up the High Country Thought Balloon Company. A series of brief vignettes about the characters, situations and stories which intersect the path of the balloons as they soar across the skies of the Southern Tablelands and Snowy region. It is about changing perspective, balloon.

Malacoota Inlet
‘Shutdown in a flat, wet land, the line beween sea and sky where grey meets grey, where stricken yachts come in’, Malacoota Inlet.

Sitting on twigs
‘Sitting on twigs in the flat lands, in a piece of country loaded with meaning, like a tightly coiled spring’, Sitting on twigs.

Word wall

An installation, featuring a series of mixed images and text about life in the corners of Australia, Word wall. Word wall included:

I smoke baby cigars
‘Smoking baby cigars in the dark of the backyard. Like some Cuban presidente haranguing the crowd with reminders, I proffer a list of romantic anniversaries, our May 4th movement, our July 12th uprising – our moment when everything became new’, I smoke baby cigars.

Cut back to black
‘Cut back to black, thin chill drizzle mid-winter – infinite regression on petrol’. Also called ‘Revhead heaven’, Cut back to black.

Coming back to these stones
‘Coming back to these stones – in the sandy dry reaches of the Coorong in South Australia’s South East birds flicker across the flat water like beads of run-away mercury’, Coming back to these stones.

Landscapes in a rear vision mirror
‘Heading at a moment's notice into Broken Hill, breaking several traffic laws on the Barrier Highway, in the rear vision mirror the land kept switching colours’, Landscapes in a rear vision mirror.

Stopping by Lake George
‘Lake George is a vast stretching freshwater lake, with no outlet. It is only diminished by evaporation. Many stories are told about Lake George, a still point of the turning earth, with all the quiet of the eye at the centre of a hurricane’, Stopping by Lake George.