poetry / video / music / science
Two of my videos 42nds and SPSS were screened at the Adelaide Festival Centre during April 2019 as part of their Screening Artists program. 42nds was on a giant LED screen overlooking King William Road, one of Adelaide’s main thoroughfares, while SPSS was shown on a large LED screen in the main foyer of the Festival Theatre itself.
Click here for a link to the Adelaide Festival Centre info.
You can watch the videos themselves below.
BRIDGE is a large collaborative exhibition held in The Packing Shed, Hart’s Mill in Port Adelaide as part of the 2018 Adelaide Fringe Festival art program. I was invited to contribute a soundscape to the installation Water Under the Bridge, by exhibition curator, Tony Kearney.
The work is installed in massive disused steel silo, which has extraordinary echo and reverb characteristics. My soundscape is built from sounds recorded at the nearby Birkenhead Bridge. The order of the sounds in the piece roughly follows the crossing of the bridge from one side to the other.
… and here to see some images of the works.
From 7th September until 9th October, my soundscape, “Heard on the Wind”, commissioned by Adelaide City Council, played in the breezeway at 25 Pirie Street, in central Adelaide CBD.
The breezeway at 25 Pirie Street is surrounded by texts: memorial plaques, notices regarding public safety and well-being, tightly-crafted slogans of the Smart City Studio windows and Enterprise Adelaide brochures. By definition, silent, largely ignored by passers-by, 25 Pirie Street : Heard on the Wind gives voice to these texts using digital sampling technology. 18 text-to-speech synthesisers read the texts, generating a base set of 500 voice samples, that were sped up and slowed down, reversed and delayed, repitched and translated into solos, conversations, choirs, snatches of melody, the heard out loud, and the barely heard at all.
It runs for about 45 minutes. You can hear the whole sequence on my Bandcamp page:
https://iangibbins.bandcamp.com/…/25-pirie-street-heard-on-…
Here is the original ACC link: http://www.cityofadelaide.com.au/…/publ…/soundscape-program/
Ian has contributed to several public art programs, either solo or as part of a group project.
and furthermore (indexed) (2022, dur: 04:57) Video screened at Disappear Here – Living With Buildings IV (Coventry, UK, November, 2022).
ISOLATION PROCEDURES (2020, dur: 6:22) Video screened at Muestra Videopoetando Las Calles, Proyección de Videopoemas (Iztapalapa, Mexico City, October, 2022).
Warranty & Conditions of Use (2020, dur: 5:26) Video screened at Muestra Videopoetando Las Calles, Proyección de Videopoemas (Iztapalapa, Mexico City, October, 2022).
colony collapse (dur: 3:54) Video screened in curated public video art exhibition at Urban Screening 2021-22 (Northbridge Piazza, Perth, WA, December 2021).
Archosaurs as part of Raining Poetry in Adelaide 2019 (J. M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide).
42nds (dur: 0:45) and SPSS (dur: 3:35) shown at the Adelaide Festival Centre digital screens (King William Road and Festival Theatre Main Foyer, Adelaide, April, 2019).
42nds. Water Screen LaserVision projection as part of HybridWorld Adelaide 2018. (Adelaide Riverbank, 20-22 July, 2018).
BLUE MOON (dur: 4:55) Soundtrack. As part of Cose Cosmiche: Sound creations inspired by the Universe, 24 hour broadcast, Milan, 2018.
25 Pirie Street: Heard on the Wind. (dur: approx 45 … Click here for more.
Created by The Red Room Company, New Shoots, is a poetic partnership with the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Sydney Olympic Park and Bundanon Trust. The project celebrates and cultivates poems inspired by plants and place. Sensurious, my video-poem featuring drawings by Judy Morris, was short-listed for the New Shoots Poetry prize, 2016. Click here to download the PDF of New Shoots Anthology: Poems Inspired by Plants. The text for Sensurious is on p. 32.
sensurious from Ian Gibbins on Vimeo.
Click here to see all Ian’s videos on Vimeo. Click on titles to watch them on Vimeo.
The Life We Live Is Not Life Itself (2021, dur: 8:45) Poetry video, with Tasos Sagris (poetry / spoken word) and WhoDoes (music) …
• official selection, and Delluc Avant-Garde Winner, Fotogenia Film Festival 2021, vol. 3 (Mexico City, November, 2021);
• official selection and overall winner, Poetry In Motion 2023 (Colorado, USA, November, 2023);
• official selection and Jury Award for Harmony Between Image, Poem and Music, 7° Festival Internacional Signes da Noite – Urbino (21st International Festival Signs of the Night – Italy) (Urbino, Italy, November, 2023);
• official selection and Winner SIGNS Award, 8. Internationales Festival Zeichen der Nacht (Signes de Nuit) / Berlin (Berlin, November, 2023);
• finalist, International Video Poetry Award, screened at Bologna in Lettere 10th – BABEL: stati di alterazione, Bologna In Lettere 2022 (Italy, March / May – June 2022);
• curated selection, “Fotogenia – A Showcase” at REELPoetry 2025 (Houston, TX, April, 2025);
• curated selection, International Poetry Festival – Kardamyli – Mani (Kardamyli, Greece, September, 2024);
• official selection, MAPPING at MECA Mediterráneo Centro Artístico (Almeria, Spain, September – October, … Click here for more.
My video poem 42nds is now being projected onto the eastern wall of the Target building in Rundle Street, Adelaide, as part of a project funded by the Adelaide City Council and the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) along with 3 other vids by by Caroline Daish and Stewart Daish; John Denlay and David Chapple; and Jessica Lumb. If you can’t make it to the city, you can see it on the small screen, with sound, here.
42nds from Ian Gibbins on Vimeo.