contain yourself: technology, the city and atmospheric intervention

Abstract

This article considers how a creative intervention can augment and embellish the atmosphere of an urban industrial site. It builds on recent scholarship on atmospheres in human geography and architecture and on the potential for creative practice to investigate spatial and sensory experience by way of close attunement. To do so, it presents an account of a temporary public art installation, contain yourself, in two shipping containers on the Maribyrnong River in January 2015, a site adjacent to a heavy freight rail bridge and a Port of Melbourne container yard. The artwork was the result of experiments at a live test site of practice by four collaborators to sketch a responsive work in neon, sound, vibration and projection that took inspiration and content from its surroundings.