Concrete Playground

Contained within a museum–like cage and existing on a diet of images, videos and sound files is Artefact H10515, the digital offspring of Australian artist Craig Walsh and his trusty helpers Steven Thomasson and Lawrence English.

Soon to be inhabiting the Powerhouse Museum, this gastronomic chameleon digests digital matter dispatched from a website that has access to a number of public and private collections, including that of the Powerhouse Museum. The result is a breathing heaving mass that morphs, moves and changes colour in response to its last meal of art à la carte.

Audiences can watch this transformation happen before them or step into the driver’s seat and upload their own content to the website. The title of the work harks back to the original object registration system of the Powerhouse Museum where items of unknown origin or purpose were given an ‘H’ prefix followed by the next available number. If our metabolism was as immediate and transparent as this, the old adage ‘you are what you eat’ would be far more frightening. Three cheers for blissful ignorance. Cheezel anyone?