The Morphos

BACKGROUND: Batty designed The Morphos for the exhibition 'Music, Melbourne and Me: 40 years of Mushroom and Melbourne's Popular Music Culture' held at RMIT Gallery. The Morphos was a large cubic structure housed in the main gallery which harnessed perceptual mapping techniques to activate an immersive multimedia experience of music, fashion and performance. CONTRIBUTION: The Morphos was designed using custom visual granular synthesis software (developed by Batty), and used 6 projectors to achieve a 360-degree projection map. The underlying technology led to the creation of another creative work 'Architectonics' for RMIT Gallery, for White Night 2016. In addition to Morphos, Batty also created for the Mushroom Records exhibition an interactive booth for participants to create videos of their thoughts on Australian music which were then mixed in with celebrity interviews in the room. He also developed an interactive jukebox. These installations exemplify Batty's merging of disparate methods of working with light and sound, and his command of digital fluency over modern technology to create immersive, participatory experiences. They contribute to Batty's ongoing research exploring the intersection between audio-visual art, computer science and musical performance. SIGNIFICANCE: The significance of The Morphos is evidenced by its inclusion in the 4-month exhibition as one of its main pieces; this, and the other 2 smaller works, contributed to the exhibition's visually and aurally rich documentation of Melbourne's music culture. The exhibition was curated by Suzanne Davies, RMIT Gallery Director and Chief Curator, and Dr Kipps Horn, Program Director of RMIT's Bachelor of Arts (Music Industry), with curatorial input from Michael Gudinski AM, CEO of The Mushroom Group (owner of Australia's biggest independent record label). The exhibition received funding support from the City of Melbourne and the Bank of Melbourne, with Telstra as technology sponsor.