BuroNorth

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Benefit Exhibition

Posted 04/12/2009

Buro North was approached recently to contribute towards a benefit exhibition held at The Commission Gallery, 28 – 30 November, run by friend of the studio, Rhys Gorgol. The exhibition was to raise money for youth with cancer through the Alfred Hospital, and carried the theme Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

The sculpture we created (with a big thanks and nod to Dave and Ben who threw many hours tirelessly creating the artwork, then even more hours laboring over a laser cutter and assembly table), entitled Dot, is a physical representation of the visual and audio information of the first minute of Dorothy’s journey along the yellow brick road, in the 1939 film Wizard of Oz….

Our process began by taking a section of Dorothy’s journey on the yellow brick road and compressing it into an image. Each column of pixels, moving from left to right, was generated by taking a single slice from sequential frames of the film. 3180 acrylic pixels were then used to represent the image. The projected lengths of the pixels in each column were generated by the audio information in the film at the corresponding moment in time. Snapshots of the audio frequency response were taken and transferred to the sculpture with high frequency at the top of the piece and low frequency at the bottom.

The result is an embodiment of Dorothy’s experience into an abstract representation, yet still preserving the tell tale signs of a blue dress, a red shoe, and the echoing call of ‘follow the yellow brick road’.