TAiR March 2022: Katayoun Javan, Journal #2

I decided to engage with the sites and places of Mparntwe by taking photographic documentation and creating Cyanotypes in blue ink. 

Cyanotype is an old photographic printing process, which uses two chemicals to produce a cyan blue print. After taking photographs I de-saturated the photos in Photoshop and increased the contrast, inverted and flipped the images to create a negative. I printed the negative on transparency films. I placed the films on fabric previously brushed with cyanotype chemicals and exposed them to the sun for 10-30 minutes depending on the darkness of the negatives and the strength of the sun. 

This method uses the sunshine to create an image, drawing on the hot and arid characteristics of the environment. The blue tone imbues the images with a sense of melancholy, which seems fitting to me as I observe the aftermath in these sites. 

TAiR March 2022: Katayoun Javan, Journal #1

During the past few weeks of my stay in Mparntwe, I’ve heard or read about some stories about sites and places such as the public library that have been affected by a new law or some colonial changes. 

These upsetting changes have occurred in multiple places around town, yet many haven’t heard about these incidents. 

After spending some time researching the Internet and the public library and reading the book; ‘A town like Mparntwe’, I decided to take photos of these sites and tell their stories through images and words.  

However I have come to realise that this is a very sensitive subject and there are different views and versions of stories and I am not certain about the exact locations of some incidents. It seems to me this is the beginning of a long research journey to understand this land better. 

The images that I have taken so far mainly don’t have any aesthetic value and are just documents. 

However, experimenting with Cyanotype was one of my main plans for this residency and it seemed like the perfect fit to print these documentations of sites with a tragic aftermath in blue ink using the sunshine that is one of the characteristics of this arid environment.

Katayoun Javan, 2022

In 2020 specific Covid-19 policies introduced at Alice Springs Public Library included banning unaccompanied patrons aged 15 years and under, alongside a particular approach to contact tracing. According to the ASTC’s 2018-2019 annual report, 93 per cent of the unaccompanied library patrons accessing youth services at the library were First Nation People. 

Read more about Libraries Are For Everyone.
Read more about Katayoun’s work.

TAiR February 2022: Dom Tang, Journal #1

These digital snapshots are comprised of hundreds of photos accumulated from my first two weeks visiting Mparntwe. Each scene is reconstructed from 30 to 400+ photos of the local environment, and transformed into point clouds and 3D meshes through Metashape, Reality Capture and Blender. Using a bicycle as my main means of transport, I have captured my daily commute from Eastside to the WTS studio and the occasional day trip. The harsh and direct sunlight of the arid climate presents less than ideal conditions for photogrammetry which you can observe through distortions to the 3D forms and textures.