moss.quarry.plaque: a soft echo of a place

moss.quarry.plaque is a public artwork by Margaret Woodward and Camilla Brueton commissioned by the City of Hobart, installed within the City of Hobart’s’ Digital Twin, a searchable, interactive, three dimensional “map” of Greater Hobart. The Digital Twin is a data-rich environment built from many different government and private data sets, used for planning the city’s infrastructure, traffic, land use and more. As artists and writers we tangle our voices and words to intercept the mesh of geocodes and data sets, woven algorithmically in the city’s digital twin. We are the first artists to work with the planning team to ‘install’ an artwork in this environment.

moss.quarry,plaque is the trace of our exchanges held during three synchronous walks in our respective cities, nipaluna/Hobart and in Caerdydd/Cardiff, Wales. Through a process of call and response, geo-locating us in our own terrain, we composed a poetic score now inscribed on digital plaques in the digital twin and to be read and heard along the route of our walks. This presentation will present the research and collaborative processes underpinning moss.quarry.plaque. Focussing on the ground, the emphasis in this work is not on the scenic and spectacular but the things that bind us together in place, moss, stone and language. Through the artwork we encountered connections between our cities and histories, and the pervasive reminders of colonialism on land that was stolen. Through moss.quarry.plaque we inscribe Hobart’s digital twin with markers that memorialise alternative ‘readings’ of the city and those whose footfall we followed; ancestors, invaders, descendants, immigrants and neighbours – ever mindful of stone, soil and moss underfoot and the memories and threads that entangle and animate our cities’ lives.

Margaret Woodward is an artist, writer and publisher and with Justy Phillips is co-founder of A Published Event. Based in lutruwita/Tasmania, Margaret’s work focuses on ‘divining’ geological and personal histories entangled in the places we call home and her practice combines walking, writing and artmaking in response to place. Margaret’s publications are held in private and institutional collections around the world. Camilla Brueton is a visual artist and writer based in Cardiff, Wales. Her practice interrogates our experience of place; reflecting on landscape, architecture, movement and shifting perspectives. Composition and the construction of images is also a formal concern within her work; how we frame and are framed by the world around us. Camilla is a creative producer for Common Wealth, a political site-specific theatre company. Margaret and Camilla collaborate remotely through a call and response technique of walking and writing developed during synchronous walks undertaken in lutruwita/Tasmania and Wales.

Links:

(1) @moss.quarry.plaque (Instagram)

(2) https://www.hobartcity.com.au/Community/Creative-Hobart/Creative-Hobart-programs/CityPILOTS

(3) https://au.opencitiesplanner.bentley.com/cityofhobart/citypilots