Edge of the Universe: LUX Light Festival 2018

Festival: LUX Light Festival, 18-27 May 2018

Digital Animation | 0:07:38:00, 25.00 fps, 1920 x 1440

Media: Sound, animated projection, black screen

Site: Taranaki Wharf diving platform cut-out, Wellington, New Zealand

Music: "Edge" ©2017 Mark K. Johnson

VUW Postgrad Student Collaborators: Nick Kempster & Branislav Tosic

In EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE_LUX 2018, letters of the alphabet cascade like a waterfall from the cornice of a small building on Taranaki Wharf into the Wellington Harbour below. As the falling letters gain in intensity and momentum, they spell out lines from six poems along the Wellington Writers' Walk, before disappearing into the turbulence again. As the letters tumble into the harbour, they become reflected back up onto the lower segment of the screen to create a cacophony of illumination. The work begins and ends with New Zealand poet laureate Bill Manhire's poem on the Writers Walk: “I live at the edge of the universe like everybody else”.

These excerpts from six poems along the Wellington Writers’ Walk invite a larger story to unfold when placed together – a story about taking risks, learning from mistakes, making a difference, seeing the light within the darkness, and gaining wisdom over time.

I live at the edge

of the universe,

like everybody else.

(Bill Manhire: 'Milky Way Bar' in Milky Way Bar, Victoria University Press, 1991)

... there’s always an edge

here that one must walk which is sharp

and precarious, requiring vigilance.

(Patricia Grace: Cousins, Penguin Books, 1992)

It’s true you can’t live here by chance,

you have to do and be, not simply watch …

(Lauris Edmond: 'The Active Voice' in Scenes from a Small City, Daphne Brasell Associates Press, 1994)

Blue rain from a clear sky.

Our world a cube of sunlight –

but to the south

the violet admonition of thunder.

(Alistair Te Ariki Campbell: 'Blue Rain' in The Dark Lord of Savaiki: Collected Poems, Hazard Press, 2003)

Then with the coming of darkness the

bay opened up beneath us, like a shell splashed

with beads of light.

(Marilyn Duckworth: A Barbarous Tongue, Hutchinson, 1963)

And now, as I grow in years,

I feel at times like an old

violin played on by a master

hand. …

(Patrick Lawlor: Old Wellington Days, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1959)

I live at the edge

of the universe,

like everybody else.

(Bill Manhire: 'Milky Way Bar' in Milky Way Bar, Victoria University Press, 1991)

The soundscape by Mark K. Johnson for EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE has six movements representing the atmospheres evoked by the six poems. The music is derived from the structural characteristics of lines from these New Zealand poems. The number of syllables in a word, the location of stressed syllables, the length of phrases, and the word order determine the musical notes and their durations. The upward and downward direction of the melody alternates between adjacent words, while the voices represent the lines of the poems. In this way, the poems’ texts are transformed into the soundscape itself, as well as the visionscape.