Curious makeover for prison surveillance

MULTIMEDIA artwork Curious Creatures allows participants to interact with digitally manufactured silhouettes on a large screen.

Jimmy McGilchrist

AT Australia's newest jail, near Gatton in southeast Queensland, state-of-the-art 360-degree motion sensor cameras monitor every move of the high-security facility's 300 inmates.

Replete with zoom-through computer technology and laser-guided trip wires, the southeast Queensland correctional facility's security system is claimed to be so sensitive it can detect a mouse's heartbeat.

This week, 11,000km away in Bloemfontein, South Africa, the same technology is being put to a less punitive use.

Sydney-based multimedia artist Jimmy McGilchrist has harnessed the science for Curious Creatures, an interactive "augmented reality" work that is headlining the international Vryfees Festival.

The project, funded by an Australia Council grant, was conceived last year in collaboration with a team including Lachlan Dowd, an Australian software engineer who helped create the prison's zoom-through software technology.

Curious Creatures allows participants to interact with digitally manufactured silhouettes on a large screen. Digital sensors use the technology to record the viewers' location, then send the data to a central computer hub. From there it is processed and beamed back at the reverse side of the screen in real time.

"We create a virtual space behind the screen and the creatures wander around in that virtual rectangle. The data we're getting from the connect tells us where people are in front of the screen, so they can wander towards the screen and interact with people," McGilchrist says.

He was commissioned by the Vryfees Festival to show the work with fellow artists Matt West and Matt Ditton. The trio packed 80kg of computer gear for the installation, which shows at the festival until Sunday.

"Every day we will be coding, making changes," McGilchrist says. "So the creatures may change or will be doing different things. One day they'll be more agitated than the next."

About 250,000 people are expected to view the work, which was first seen at last year's Splendour in the Grass festival in Woodford, Queensland.

"The most important question we asked ourselves in planning Vryfees 2012 was what can we show South Africans that they have never seen before. This is how the Curious Creatures installation became a reality for us, with the help of the Australia Council for the Arts. A first in South Africa," festival director Adri Herbert says.