Stuart Foster, Jessie Austin-Stewart, Jon He, Sabrina Lawson - Elastic Proximity
About: At Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, Jesse Austin-Stewart, Jon He, Stuart Foster, and Sabrina Lawson collaborate across sound, space, and moving image. Austin-Stewart, a sound artist and lecturer, develops vibration-based and spatial listening works that expand accessibility in music. He, an experimental sound and integrated media artist, merges ancient sound practice/ancestral sensorial knowledge with technology to mediate sonic expression and experience. Foster, a spatial designer, creates immersive interactive environments through digital fabrication, responsive sensing, sound and light. Lawson, a creative technologist, builds projection-driven installations where image, light, and architecture interact. Together, they produce research-driven installations and performances that combine sonic experimentation with spatial and visual design, challenging conventional boundaries between disciplines and audiences.
Piece: Elastic Proximity is an interactive spatial installation that reanimates archival field recordings from urban sites, resituating them within a new sensory ecology. Three standing objects, each a sentient node of sound and light, respond to the presence and movement of bodies in space. As visitors approach, dormant atmospheres awaken: traffic hums become harmonic pulses, air vents translate into tone, memory turns acoustic. Through proximity sensors, spatial sound, and colour-coded illumination, the work compresses distance, inviting audiences to slip between place and time, and turns the sculptures into agentic participants with the audience. The work investigates how sound archives function as portals, teleporting listeners into layered histories while interacting with audiences, anchoring them in the present moment. Elastic Proximity invites listeners to interact with disconnected moments and place through spatial encounter; hearing with the body, moving through the past, and shaping an environment that listens back.