THE AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR THE MOVING IMAGE

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) opened its doors to the public in 2002 as part of a large-scale site redevelopment of Victoria’s much-maligned ‘Gas and Fuel’ towers. The latter structure was razed to the ground and in its place rose the Ian Potter Centre (National Gallery of Victoria) dedicated to Australian art; the Melbourne headquarters for Australia’s multicultural public service broadcaster, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS); the Australian Racing Museum; National Design Centre; ACMI; and a swathe of bars and restaurants. Angle nestling against angle, the jutting profiles of these neighbours fit entrance to exit, shard to shard. This new cultural precinct and protruding contributor to Melbourne’s skyline is called Federation Square, and its design is the work of Lab Architecture, who envisioned their task as contributing to ‘a reaffirmation of the original interactive nature of civic existence’ (Lab Architecture 2005). Indeed, in recent years Federation Square’s sun-kissed red and yellow cobblestones, mined from the outback, have been thoroughly traversed by festival goers, sports lovers, tourists, protestors, locals and onlookers.

Figure 22.1 ACMI with Federation Square

© ACMI

In many ways, Federation Square has been a space for transit, as it is flanked by a major tram and train intersection point, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Yarra River and Melbourne’s newest public parkland, Birrarung Marr. Federation Square is also the location of Melbourne’s most visible public screen and events stage, and has become a metropolitan heartland for the arts, sport, community activities, political expression, and wining and dining.

From the moment that visitors step off the undulating, cobbled warmth of Federation Square and into ACMI’s smooth white foyer, a distinctive space for public participation presents itself. In the same way that Federation Square reframes the experience of cultural and environmental spaces by mining stone from the Kimberleys to relocate a small part of the outback in metropolitan Melbourne, ACMI reframes cultural and physical experiences of art by offering an institutional interface for the intersection of image, art and technology.

From the reception area, a heavy-set cement staircase leads up to two state-of-the-art cinema theatres. These have played host to forums, symposiums and a diverse range of events, such as international film festivals, Melbourne’s weekly Cinematheque, late-night cult film sessions and digital cinema programs. Moving past these stairs, an escalator takes patrons down to the main foyer. This space flickers with 42 plasma screens, a digital wallpaper connecting the entrances to ACMI’s Screen Gallery, the Memory Grid, Games Lab and Screen Pit. Also located within this space is a brightly lit reception desk, the collection and drop off point for ACMI’s lending collection and an information hub for visitors.

Figure 22.2 ACMI foyer and reception desk

© ACMI

ACMI is spread over 7000 square meters and four floors at Federation Square. It was established as a part of the Film Act 2001, where, in an attempt to boost Victoria’s film industry, ACMI was formed as a cultural centre for film along with a new film-financing body, Film Victoria. ACMI runs educational programs and has links to educational institutions, and the film, video and digital media industries. It also attempts to satisfy a remit of enhancing screen literacy by developing educational programs; engaging with technological and content production of the moving image; funding research; pushing for innovation within creative industries by collaborating with international, interstate and community groups; and expanding its archive of moving image material.

ACMI’s Memory Grid has kindled an integration of many of these initiatives. Created and submitted by members of the public, the Memory Grid is a collection of over 100 hours of film that tells the tales of everyday experience. The growing collection is exhibited in interactive ‘pods’, where groups of visitors sit together and curate their own intimate viewing program via a touch-screen interface. Visitors can ‘MAP’ visual memories of Victoria’s backyards, streets and towns in Memory and Place, or, alternatively, seek out the more recent histories of their neighbourhoods in Women’s Qesa: Stories of Sudan, an exhibition of digital stories told by newly migrated Sudanese women.

Figure 22.3 Descent into ACMI’s Screen Gallery

© ACMI

Adjoining the Memory Grid are ACMI’s production spaces, the Digital Studio and Screen Pit. The Screen Pit is a fully equipped television studio and hosts a number of educational programs, which allow children’s imaginations to roam free in a chroma-key fantasyland. Alternatively, it can be transformed into an amphitheatre for the research, development and exhibition of experimental new-media works. The Digital Studio is a media workshop fully equipped with the hardware and software capable of assisting participants in the conceptualisation, production and execution of their own moving image projects.

A little further down the corridor is the Games Lab. Bright green and busy, this is a space for all things gaming and game-related, such as machinima festivals, in-house networked games, forums about gaming hero and superstar Sonic the Hedgehog, and Escape from Woomera, a critique of detention centres in Australia.

By shifting the parameters for participation with art, the Screen Gallery explores our relationship with the moving image in a different manner. To attend the gallery, the visitor descends below street level into a dark underworld of art and technology, housed in the empty belly of a former train platform. This history gently reveals itself in the faint vibrations of neighbouring platforms, a soft rumbling that accompanies ACMI’s audience on their visit. Descending from the foyer into the gallery, small beacons of light cut the dimly lit passageways, leading visitors into rooms and corridors, and opening lines of enquiry into the ghostly sounds that seep from the exhibits. Dark and ambient, this space devoted to screen-based art plays on sensory perception, the visceral and kinaesthetic, a distinctive art experience as compared with the white walls, polished wooden floorboards and bright lights of the nearby Ian Potter Centre.

This is a place for re-imagining. While the gallery’s grey concreted entrance appears unyielding to the flow of people and projections that have passed through it, the passage of descent marks its transition into an underground space to be inscribed by visitor experience. With each new exhibition, rooms may form, corridors can collapse and disappear, and the ceiling may split in half, as moveable walls and a retractable mezzanine are curated as a part of the exhibition design. Here the pliable architecture contributes to new spatial experiences of media art.

Over the years, the Screen Gallery’s exhibitions have surveyed the breadth and depth of moving image art in a number of ways. Thematic explorations have considered issues of space, memory, globalisation, apocalypse, art history and identity. Artists have pushed scientific boundaries through the use of new, highly interactive technologies such as infra-red sensors, surveillance cameras and computer interfaces. Artworks have reflected the rich and multifarious possibilities of aesthetic form, including dance works, music clips, narratives, networked art and abstract art. The Screen Gallery has also been the site of large-scale collaborations with the National Gallery of Victoria, including 2004: Australian Culture Now, a survey of over 150 recent Australian works, and more recently 2006 Contemporary Commonwealth, which featured artists from across the Commonwealth.

The Screen Gallery’s main exit is a glowing escalator placed in the middle of the exhibition space, a curiously situated point for departure. In some ways, the escalator references the fluidity of arrival and egress at ACMI, perhaps alluding to the gallery’s occupation of a site historically designed for transit. These notions of arrival and departure could be considered a metaphor for ACMI’s unique tenancy at Federation Square. Like the square, the passing of time and bodies through space and the embedding of experience have fashioned it as a distinctive public space in Melbourne. However, unlike Federation Square, ACMI is a quiet place nested within the chaos and bustle of the city. It also offers the public a point of experiential departure, whether immersion in the dark spaces of the gallery and cinema, occupation of places of fantasy in the studios, or stepping into the worlds of others in the Memory Grid.

By inviting heightened levels of participation with the moving image in this way, ACMI is distinguishing itself as part of a new breed of cultural organisations. Interactivity has become a key mechanism for enhancing the quality of experience and depth of meaning to be drawn from encounters with art. With agency and subjectivity preferenced in this manner, ACMI has come to occupy a space away from Federation Square. With each visit, interaction, moment of learning or aesthetic response, ACMI evolves in the realm of visitor experience, meaning that in coming years ACMI will continue to grow not only as a resident of Federation Square or as an experimental public art space, but also in the creative imagination of its visitors.

REFERENCES

Lab Architecture. 2005. ‘Federation Square’. [Internet]. Accessed 15 May 2005. Available from: http://www.labarchitecture.com.

 

Cite this chapter as: Radywyl, Natalia. 2006. ‘The Australian Centre for the Moving Image’. South Pacific Museums, edited by Healy, Chris; Witcomb, Andrea. Monash University ePress: Melbourne. pp. 22.1–22.4.

© Copyright 2006 Natalia Radywyl
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