Digital Winter

Melbourne’s Open House weekend saw the Grainger Museum open its doors to present Grainger Digital Winter, a collaborative exhibition by Interactive Composition and Animation students responding to Percy Grainger’s experimental practice.

The animation students first prepared visual works inspired by Grainger’s ideas on ‘free music’, as well as the diagrams he used for his Free Music machines. They then collaborated with Interactive Composition students to create audio-visual artworks. The animators analysed the sound compositions to extract data from the audio files, and used this data to animate their designs, breathing motion and life into the collaborative artworks. 

Also on display were interactive replicas of Percy Grainger’s Free Music machines, created by musician and composer Rosalind Hall and media artist Michael Candy.

This Academic Engagement project was facilitated and developed by Christie Widiarto, Pauric Freeman and Anthony Lyons of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne.