anywhere and here

anywhere and here is a suite of five interconnected kinetic sculptures which generate their own real-time video. It specifically explores the road movie genre, summoning familiar visions of the empty landscape, the wide open road and the car-in-motion, to destabilise powerful cinematic clichés.

anywhere and here was commissioned by ACMI and was exhibited at ACMI as Ian Burns: In the Telling in 2012–13.

Burns adapts existing appliances and domestic items and gives them new functions within his sculptures. This work draws meaning from the contrast between the projected image and the machinery out of which it is made.

The five sculptures that make up this work are linked via a video control system constructed by Burns and designed to switch between each of the structures at random. The images that are produced by the sculptures are projected onto the wall for the audience to view. Each scene generates its own live soundtrack. Burns has hacked an electronic keyboard to plunk out a simple music track. The keyboard becomes an integral part of the sculpture.

A shot of the moon suspended over water is based around a glass top table. The resulting optic effect simulates water movement and sparkle. A strip of plywood simulates the sky at dusk, while the moon is created by the projection of light through a hole in the wood.

On one end of a folding table the effect of a smoking chimney is generated using a plastic salad bowl with a LED light inside shining through a slit cut in the backing of a picture frame. The view from the camera is across a roll of hobby store brick print paper.

On the other end of the folding table, to simulate a high zoom shot of a plane passing overhead, Burns rotates a party store plastic salad bowl while a LED light inside the bowl generates the cloud effect. A fan usually used as a cooling device for a computer, generates the sound of the jet and shakes the camera to simulate the zoom effect on a hand-held camera.

A black vinyl chair has been stripped of all its vinyl until only a narrowing strip remains with slots cut out of it. The camera view of this under a red light gives it the look of a remote roadway in dry country.

The shot in close-up of a wheel with the white stripes of the road whizzing past is a road movie cliché. The sculpture is constructed out of an actual car wheel on a treadmill and a camera positioned to catch a cinematic view of the action.

The fifth sculpture comprises the central electronic system that guides the work as a whole.