About the Event
Numen — spirit of place. An art-science project inspired by the Big History approach to understanding our past and future.
Numen is an immersive multimedia song cycle exploring the origins, climate and landscapes of the Great Southern region and Albany in Western Australia — created by Albany-based media artist Peter Morse, with an original musical score by Western Australian composers Glenn Rogers and Steve Richter.
Using computer visualisation of climate and geophysical simulations, satellite data and ultra-high definition videography, the visuals span 6 billion years — from cosmic solar system formation through the emergence of early life, the separation from East Antarctica, the Albany-Fraser Orogen, and the drift of the Australian continent, extending into imagined futures 1 billion years hence.
The song cycle situates Menang-Noongar language within the work, referencing the six Menang-Noongar seasons — Birak, Bunuru, Djeran, Makuru, Djilba, and Kambarang — two ways of reading the same country, each with something to learn from the other.
In the Room
Three screens surround you, square to one another but standing apart — like windows onto the world. This is immersive cinema: a CAVE-like room you are inside, rather than a screen you sit in front of.
Often the three screens are windows onto one continuous world; at other times they hold different views, and the room becomes a triptych. There is no fixed seat and no correct place to stand. You can walk, sit or lie down, and what you see depends on where you turn and how long you stay.
Much of Numen moves slowly. Long horizons, weather crossing country, light shifting on granite — nearer to standing in front of a landscape painting than to watching a film. Nothing insists on being caught; the slow passages are there to be dwelt in.