Cyberdelia

Cyberdelia is a visceral encounter with the aesthetic and ideals of Melbourne underground cyber artists at the confluence of analogue and digital creative practice in 1991.

In blending artist interviews and works, this magazine style documentary explores visions of personal and cultural enhancement through transformative digital technologies. The imminent fusion of spirituality with technology; flesh with machine and psychedelia with cybernetics is confidently proclaimed.

Cyberdelia is a visual and aural feast with the film-makers channelling the post-modern mischief and transcendental yearnings of the ‘cyberdelic’ movement to radical stylistic effect. Stunning cyber artist works are liberally leveraged as both feature material and interstitial fodder. Low-budget analogue video editing and compositing tools are pushed to the limit while artist on-camera interviews are staged in bizarre fashion so as to maintain the feel of a ‘trip documentary’ from start to finish.

Cyberdelia stretches the boundaries of arts documentary to portray the brazen idealism and micro-processor powered creativity of these pre World Wide Web visionaries. Produced for community television and first broadcast on RMITV, Cyberdelia was later shown on SKA-TV and other Australian community television test transmissions. It was also selected for the Sixth Australian International Video Festival (1991).

Artists: Acid Death Bed, Misha Hollenbach, Troy Innocent (Cyber Dada), Natalie Jeremijenko, Adem Jaffers (Neuro), Jeff Jaffers (Third Eye), Dale Nason (Cyber Dada), Ollie Olsen (Third Eye) Captain ROM, Stelarc, Gus Till (Third Eye), Julian Wong, Christopher Wright and Max Q.

Cyberdelia was generously donated to ACMI by Cyberdelia Productions.