Remote Origins

Operations Director: Madelynne Cornish

Artistic Director: Philip Samartzis

Design + Development: Public Office

PO Box 456, Mount Beauty, 3699,
Victoria, Australia

The Bogong Centre for Sound Culture is a remote-regional cultural initiative situated in the foothills of Victoria’s Alpine National Park. Established by Philip Samartzis and Madelynne Cornish the Centre supports projects focusing on the processes and impacts of sustainable energy production; effects of climate change in wilderness areas; ethnographic studies of remote communities; the chronicling of vanishing industrial procedures; and systems of representation used to render natural and built environments.

Additionally, the BCSC facilitates a broad cultural program comprising, festivals, exhibitions, publications, master classes and artists’ talks focusing on site-specific art practices. These programs establish a connection with place, its inhabitants, geographic space and memory. They engage a wide range of audiences, bringing together local, interstate and international artists across multiple disciplines and fields to realise ambitious works.

The BCSC is situated at the newly restored old school at Bogong Alpine Village located 350 kilometres from Melbourne in North East Victoria.

About Bogong Village

Bogong Alpine Village is 325 kilometres North-East of Melbourne situated at an altitude of 800 meters in the Alpine National Park between Mount Beauty and Falls Creek. The village was established in the late 1930s to service the first hydroelectric scheme in mainland Australia. More recently it has become a popular site for alpine sports, recreation and ecotourism. Click here for directions.

A Short History

Work on the Kiewa Scheme commenced in 1938 with the construction of a road from Tawonga to the High Plains. Previously the only access was by foot or horseback along tracks that had been forged by cattlemen of a bygone era. Bogong Village was established once the road from Junction Camp was trafficable (March 1939); this paved the way for the construction of permanent buildings. Prior to that life was tough; large canvas tents and flies were used for sleeping quarters and smaller tents were set up to house the kitchens. By 1940 Bogong Township had grown considerably with a general store, staff offices, recreational mess, police station, and a variety of accommodation such as single men’s quarters and residences for married staff and families.

Bogong State School

In 1941 the Primary School at Bogong Village enrolled its first intake of students comprising nine pupils. Initially the school consisted of a large classroom, storeroom and boys and girls toilets. Extensions were carried out in 1944, which expanded the capabilities of the school. A library, storeroom, pupil’s lunchroom and shelter shed were added and rock gardens were established. By 1947 the number of students had grown to 46 all of whom were children of local SEC workers. Over the years class sizes fluctuated and the building remained unchanged. In 1980 it ceased to operate as a school and sat idle, eventually falling into disrepair. In 2004 it was sold along with many other buildings in the village.

Madelynne Cornish and Philip Samartzis bought the Old School and set about restoring it to its former glory. The rotting weatherboards and floorboards, smashed windows and flaking paint are now a distant memory. The newly refurbished building occupies it’s original footprint and bares a strong resemblance to it’s former self. Although the internals have been modernized remnants of it’s past history remain. The Old School once played a significant role in the fabric of village life. It inspired the community and helped shape the minds of those who studied there. It is our intention as custodians that the School once again functions as a place of inspiration.

Reference: Kiewa Kids School Days at Bogong & Mount Beauty by Graham Gardner

ISBN 0-646-36226-7. Published 1998

Cloud Affects

21.12—30.03.2020

Artists

Philip Samartzis

Supporters: 2019 Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture; Creative Victoria; High Altitude Research Station at Jungfraujoch; Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology; National Gallery of Victoria; School of Art - RMIT University; Swiss National Science Foundation

Cloud Affects is an architectural and sound installation by Roland Snooks and Philip Samartzis that draws attention to the scale, accelerating growth and subsequent ecological implications of computation and ‘the cloud’ – a metaphor for the internet.

Often thought of as immaterial and benign, the cloud is in fact a vast ecosystem of over 40 billion devices, apps and software, driving trillions of uploads, downloads and their subsequent storage. The seemingly non-physical contents of the cloud have a massive physical footprint on earth. The global network of energy-hungry data centres enabling the cloud are set to consume as much as 1/5 of the earth’s energy generation by 2025, much of it from non-renewable sources such as oil, gas and coal.

Cloud Affects seeks to draw this complex scenario into focus, questioning how we feel about the most sophisticated technologies in use today – software, AI and algorithms being powered by polluting carbon-based systems that are contributing to global heating and its consequences. Our future cities will increasingly rely on advanced cloud computing, from simple algorithmic procedures to artificial intelligence, for their design, construction and infrastructural logistics. These cloud-based algorithms become the unseen structural framework behind the evolution of urbanism and architecture. Cloud Affects explores what is not seen in this algorithmically driven computational cloud world.

The project attempts to reify a structure from the nebulous; to materialise and express these intangible algorithms and make reference to the real-world infrastructure required to prop up the virtual cloud. It seeks to offer a new architectural geometric expression, one that can only emerge from the use of advanced computation within both the design and robotic fabrication processes.

Cloud Affects also explores the architectural relationship of structure and ornament enabled by cloud-based algorithms. The polymer skin of the project is reinforced through the use of carbon fibre and resin to give it structural rigidity and strength. This carbon fibre inlay is simultaneously expressive and ornamental, an enhanced tectonic legibility of the structural system highlighting the algorithm-enabled architecture of the installation.

The embedded sound installation explores the environmental impact of cloud computing and its massive energy requirements – capturing the sounds of the cloud and its physical implications, being composed in part from recordings of glacial melting recorded in the Swiss Alps and Antarctica, and the scientific instruments used to measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – creating a sonic affect as a consequence of global climate change.

Commissioned by the Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne with the support of RMIT University School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University School of Art, Boeing, and The Hugh D. T. Williamson Foundation. Sound work supported by The Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, Creative Victoria, the High-Altitude Research Station at Jungfraujoch and Gornegrat, the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology at the Zurich University of the Arts, and the Swiss National Science Foundation.