Meet my Mentors

I developed new skills in technology, music and content creation as part of VIEWS FROM THE WONDERCHAIR with these two amazing artists and mentors…LINCOLN MACKINNON and ROLY SKENDER!

  • I've had the privilege of working with Hugo Flavelle, as an Artist Mentor and Collaborator, on the experimental research project 'Views From The Wonder Chair'.

    This exciting project is a direct follow up to several years of working with Hugo on a number of film, audio, experimental and interactive projects including: 'Woof', 'Wonder Chair', 'Claiming Space' and many more.

    During this time, Hugo and I worked to explore and develop a number of challenging and political concepts and themes such as: 'Accessibility', 'Being Heard' and 'Recognition'.

    While undertaking these projects, Hugo experimented with a range of key creative roles including: videographer, sound recordist, writer, director, editor and songwriter.

    For this to be possible, we researched, adapted and employed the use of various assistive technologies including: app controlled lighting, app controlled audio recording, wheelchair modifications and trailers.

    'Views from the Wonder Chair', drawing on previous work and professional relationships, allowed us to team up with experimental filmmaker and projectionist, Roly Skender. With our combined skill set, we further explored these themes and experimented with creative ways to present the works to audiences so it is accessible to Hugo, other artists using wheelchairs and members of Hugo’s community. This involved projecting moving images and political statements such as 'LET ME IN' onto buildings, staircases, fences, bridges and cars. The visual content used was a combination of objects, places and people filmed by Hugo, Roly and myself, graphic design and AI generated content - all responding to Hugo's likes, dislikes, Hobbies and obsessions.

    A big part of this project was the accompanying music and audio to the visuals. Here, Hugo further developed his love of songwriting by creating a number of songs and soundscapes, each of which drew on his playful nature, love of storytelling, imagined scenarios and encounters with famous people. While the songs are written, performed and recorded by Hugo (with our support), he wanted to experiment with using AI generated voices to sing his lyrics and melodies. By selecting a generated 'voice' (tone, timbre etc.) he was happy with, Hugo used AI voices as a way of representing 'His Voice' and desired 'Image'.

    This 'Voice', along with his generated imagery, thematics, messaging and placement, all worked together to ensure that Hugo was in charge of presenting his own unique image and voice, whilst also being completely accessible to ALL members of the community.

    It's been a privilege to be a part of this project and I am confident that Hugo now has the tools at his disposal to further pursue these ideas and concepts on a larger scale.

  • Between January 2023 and March 2024, I worked with Hugo Flavelle on the project, 'Views from the Wonderchair' as a supporting artist and mentor.

    As a digital artist with experience in technologies including projection mapping, interactive art and software design, I aimed to support Hugo to experiment with new approaches in art-making and collaboration.

    One of our first experiments was to use the familiar interface of a physical joystick (Hugo's wheelchair is powered by a joystick) to control elements of imagery for projection mapping. This included mapping corners to a box, changing video clips and other effects. It was easy for Hugo to take his familiarity of the joystick interface and adapt it to other tasks, so it was already time to move on to bigger things!

    Hugo has a very active imagination and enjoys working collaboratively. and much of our time was spent finding ways for him to express his unique world view (from the Wonderchair).

    We discussed using video projections in public spaces. This led to a series of public interventions where imagery of Hugo in his wheelchair was projected as a moving light source (both from a van and being towed by Hugo with his custom wheelchair trailer) onto familiar landmarks on the streets of Fremantle at night.

    Hugo liked the idea of adding a robot dog to the projections, a loyal pet that would follow him wherever he went. His enjoyment of public showings made it clear that certain forms of performing and engaging directly with the public were of great value to him.

    Over the span of the project, we explored many other methods and techniques for artmaking including long-exposure photography, video editing, microscopic cameras, AI tools, exploration of projection surface materials and music/audio production.

    Hugo is particularly interested in music and can identify musical notes by name without reference (ie - he has perfect pitch). An example of this was when he was able to speak the names of notes for harmony parts that we would then enter into the editing software for him. He could hear the parts working together in his head before we even pressed play. Not many musicians are capable of that.

    It became important to change our approach to planned activities depending on Hugo’s level of concentration and comfort. Verbal games n which he would ask me to describe what something/someone would be or behave like in a particular imaginary situation became a playful process of building a world together.

    The result of all these interactions helped to build trust and kept the project moving forward with a spirit of playfulness and discovery.

    Despite some challenges, we were able to cover a lot of ground, introducing Hugo to aspects of creativity and technology that would otherwise present barriers to access.

    I look forward to Hugo using some of the skills and knowledge gained in this project to contribute to his future as a practising artist. It’s been a privilege to be part of his Wonderchair project.