translation

MELBOURNE IMMIGRATION MUSEUM

The studio involved the development of proposals for a temporary exhibition within the Immigration Museum of Victoria. Informed by the affective and sensorial concerns of contemporary installation art, the project interrogated the movement between cultures, languages, memory, senses and media in order to develop atmospheric and immersive museum environments. In this undertaking the sensitivity toward the way specific cultural issues were represented and how people’s immigrant stories were told was of primary concern.

The project involved the investigation of the idea of translation, the process of transformation involved in the movement from one idiom to another. Within the project the act of translation was carried out in many ways; on one level it referred to the multicultural background of Melbourne’s population and the way in which language, customs and cultural practices both endure and are transformed as a myriad of ethnicities are integrated within the larger culture. On another level it referred to the translation of ideas and techniques through specific media (such as light, sound and video) and the appreciation of the opportunities for creative expression offered when different media are combined.