Garry Stewart & Australian Dance Theatre

Proximity Interactive (2014) invites viewers to shape space by using their own bodies. Created by Garry Stewart, with video effects developed by French video engineer Thomas Pachoud, and performed initially by Australian Dance Theatre to live audiences, the real-time video effects position the viewer as the active participant – wilfully generating a world of magical effects and drawing the movement of their bodies in space.

Participation is at the core of this project at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. We are encouraged to BE – in our bodies and in the world. In one of the immersive sequences, the negative space between viewers is materialised as a web that expands and contracts as the bodies occupy the room. Through these sequences the work reminds us of the impact we have on the world we inhabit and in the words of Magic Object essayist Ted Snell, ‘prompts further exploration of the effect we can have on our environment and on those around us’.

Proximity Interactive is on display at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art during Magic Object.