FLOW: Shared play through sound and movement
DELIVERED | BRISBANE FESTIVAL AND ISEA 2024
A responsive audiovisual environment where movement and gesture let people shape a shared world of light and sound.
The opportunity
FLOW uses water as a metaphor for shared emotion. Its 2024 presentations at ISEA and Brisbane Festival connect a Brisbane creative practice with local audiences and an international arts and technology programme.
The experience
Generative animation, modular electronic sound and a sensory interface respond to movement. People explore rhythm, colour and atmosphere together, with performance extending the relationship between participants and the work.
Documented delivery
The Brisbane Festival programme credits Georgie Pinn and Tara Pattenden. ISEA lists those artists with Kairos Kin and Dorian Dowse. These organiser records confirm 2024 presentations and complement the supplied portfolio’s account of Arts Queensland support.
Agency through movement
A small gesture can influence a much larger visual and sonic environment. This gives participants a clear relationship between action and response, while other people can watch, listen and join the encounter.
Opportunities for a future commission
Participation across generations
Movement and gesture provide an immediate invitation to experiment. A council activation could give families and mixed-age groups a shared creative activity, with seated and lower-movement options tested in the design.
Nature as a shared language
Water offers a familiar starting point for connecting body, emotion and environment. A future programme could add a local waterway theme and facilitated interpretation without treating artistic metaphor as scientific instruction.
A cultural reason to stay
An evolving responsive environment can encourage exploration alongside scheduled performance. Future evening programming could connect participation with nearby cultural venues and hospitality.
A council could commission an evening installation with short artist-led sessions and a local environmental story. A major-event precinct could adapt the responsive format for shared fan participation, subject to a separate design and delivery brief.
Audience insights and engagement data
A future installation could log triggered audiovisual elements, interaction duration and activity by time period. Aggregated patterns and voluntary feedback could help refine content and facilitation. Optional sign-ups could collect email addresses and stated cultural interests for future events, with separate follow-up consent. Movement signals would describe interaction with the work; they would not establish a participant’s emotions or identity.
How a future commission could be evaluated
- Responsive play
- Log activation counts, session duration and preferred audiovisual elements.
- Experience and access
- Combine voluntary feedback with observations of shared use and participation barriers.
- Return engagement
- Measure voluntary email sign-ups and future event referrals with explicit consent.
A useful commissioning step
Define the desired social encounter before selecting equipment. Pilot the interface with diverse users, agree sound and light conditions, and scope artist, performer and technical responsibilities for the venue.
Sources and credits
Brisbane Festival 2024 guide pp. 62–63; ISEA2024 FLOW and Dreaming of the Sea listings; supplied portfolio pp. 7 and 11. Organiser records resolve the 2024 presentation date.