Gregory Bennett: The Digital Multitude
12 November, 2012 - 13 January, 2013
AV Gallery
Gregory Bennett, Morpheme II (2009-2012), Three-screen HD video
Gregory Bennett, Utopia II (2011), HD video
Utopia I, Utopia III and Morpheme II are part of a series of ongoing video works that employ 3-D animation to create views of intricate digital colonies, featuring digitally generated and animated figures and environments. A generic animated figure is employed as a building block in the creation of these works, which assemble and reassemble the replicated figure into units of performed actions, loops, and cycles, creating ongoing series of patterns of movement vocabulary situated in a range of architectural settings.
Drawing on diverse influences, including the photographic studies of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, the 1930s Hollywood dance choreography of Busby Berkeley, video game visualizations, and a range of literary and visual conceptions of utopia and dystopia, the works embrace an unembellished digital aesthetic with regard to its image rendering.
Thematic concerns include issues such as the individual versus group dynamics, crowd behaviours, the ontological status of the automaton, modularity and automation in the creation and behaviors of the ‘digital multitude,’ and the exploration of the choreographic interplay between moving figure and environment, in works that can be read as simultaneously utopian and dystopian.
Gregory Bennett’s creative practice encompasses both moving, still image, and interactive works, which are entirely digitally generated using 3D animation software. His work has been shown in both public spaces and dealer galleries, in forms which range from small monitors, to gallery wall projections, to a seven-storey public building façade for the Living Room public art event in Auckland in 2011. International exhibitions and screenings include Experimenta in Melbourne, Headlands at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, and more recently in the USA at ISEA in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Lamar Dodd School of Art in Athens, Georgia. He is currently a senior lecturer in Digital Design at AUT University, and is represented by Two Rooms Gallery in Auckland.