Viscerally exploring the rapidly developing technology of unmanned aerial vehicles and their social and cultural impact, A Drone Opera will be presented by Arts House at the Meat Market, North Melbourne for a limited season from 10 September 2015.
Artist Matthew Sleeth directs an experimental multimedia performance featuring unmanned aerial vehicles (colloquially known as drones), their pilots and opera singers, combined with a new sound score, laser light design and moving image.
Feeling the drones’ air displacement and hearing their rotor sound, audiences will experience this robotic technology first hand, shifting their knowledge of drones from political abstraction into embodied experience in time and space. Curious about their potential to reshape our world, Sleeth has designed, built and programmed customised drones specifically for the performance context.
Sleeth’s largest work to date, A Drone Opera features an inspiring line-up of collaborators including experimental artists Kate Richards, Robin Fox, Phil Samartzis and Susan Frykberg, lighting designer Bosco Shaw and choreographer Shelley Lasica.
An Australian contemporary visual artist who lives and works between Melbourne and New York, Sleeth’s conceptually driven practice includes sculpture, photography, video and public installation. Sleeth’s work has been widely collected and exhibited throughout Australia (including the National Gallery of Victoria as part of Melbourne Now) and internationally including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Cologne, Berlin and Venice.
A Drone Opera
Arts House at Meat Market, 5 Blackwood Street, North Melbourne
Season: 10 – 13 September 2015
Bookings: (03) 9322 3713 or online at: www.artshouse.com.au
For more information, visit: www.artshouse.com.au for details.
Image: A Drone Opera – photo courtesy Matthew Sleeth & Experimenta Media Arts