Artist in Residence

2021 Artist in Residence – Liam Somerville.

Liam Somerville is a cinematographer and video artist living and working on Kaurna Land, South Australia. He graduated from the University of South Australia in 2011 with a Bachelor of Digital Media Arts, specialising in film and animation. Since then Liam has been committed to the exploration of the moving image and is obsessed with distortion and manipulation of digital visual realities. His video work plays with human interaction in the digital world by injecting human processing into virtual/digital realms by use of game engines like Unreal Engine, node-based coding and a range of interactive sensors and hardware. Liam’s experimental nature means that his work is forever evolving as new tools, techniques or technologies are discovered and introduced into the workflow.

For his residency at Flinders, Liam teamed up again with long-time collaborator Michael Ellingford who created the interactive techno soundtrack for his project Eschatech. They have worked together on multiple projects over the years and have developed a deep artistic connection. Michael has written, recorded, mixed and released music spanning genres from techno, noise, experimental and doom metal. 

Recently Liam and sonic collaborator Michael Ellingford exhibited their immersive piece NOISE//NATURE at the Lab in Adelaide. The meditative installation hypnotised viewers seated with soft gradients and natural shapes, created and composed in virtual 3D space. 

Earlier in 2021, Liam was approached to participate in an artistic partnership between Northern Sound System (NSS), BLKMPIRE and Flinders University to assist in the creation of an animated contemporary indigenous Welcome to Country with local musicians MRLN and Jimblah. The clip was created using Niagara particle systems inside Unreal Engine and the characters are driven by motion capture data from The Void. 

2020 Artist in Residence – Kate Power.

Kate is an Adelaide-based artist and writer whose practice embraces video, performance, textiles, sculpture and installation. She observes social environments to think about how seemingly insignificant moments affect us psychologically and physiologically. Over a period of 2 months Kate developed a new project titled Mush to Muscle that allied her sculpture practice with embodiment and the choreographic. Over this time she was able to make connections to staff, researchers and students, drawing on the facilities available to her at our university.