Raewyn Turner has just completed creating the video to Neil Finn's song Turn and Run for this year's APRA Awards - a coup in anyone's books. Her work explores war and violence, video games and families. I sent her these questions and this is what she had to say: Raewyn Turner has just completed creating the video to Neil Finn's song Turn and Run for this year's APRA Awards - a coup in anyone's books. Her work explores war and violence, video games and families. I sent her these questions and this is what she had to say: You've been associated with Split Enz for a long time. How did this recent collaboration with Neil Finn come about?
RT: I worked with Neil for many years (from when he was 17) and it helps that I very much enjoy his music and it feels familiar. Some of my collaborations are where I make my contribution independently of the other's, that is, our work sits side by side, and the collaboration is a dovetailing, which is how this one happened too. It was commissioned by Mike Chunn who runs APRA NZ, to open the APRA 2002 Awards ceremony with an audio visual work of the song that won the award the previous year. Mike has been a great support he's encouraged and assisted me to make experimental work without bounds. Two years ago he asked me to create a multisensory atmosphere for the APRA awards. I had never made video before, but buoyed by the ANAT (Australian Network for Art and Technology) Masterclass that I had just returned from in Australia and Mike's offer of a loan of a dv camera, I set to work to make 35 minutes of video which were projected on two walls 11m x 14 m, along with smell scapes and sound by Tom Bailey of International Observer..

Did Neil have any input into this work?
RT: Neil didn't know about the video until 2 days before the APRA music awards. I didn't ask him about the lyrics, I'm really interested in misinterpretation and associations and how we make sense of songs, build images around lyrics.

What I've always liked about your work is the way you use images from your everyday life which includes being a mum, a neighbour, a woman artist etc.
RT: Duchamp had considerable influence on the generations of artists after 1945. His way of incorporating the trivial in everyday reality lived on in the manifestations of pop art produced by people like Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg or Richard Hamilton. Our lives are made of the simple and practical daily experiences, these are precious inspirations to me, I try to work with what I know and I know that which is closest to me.

When you first heard Turn and Run you thought it was a love song. Later on you decided it was anti-war?
RT: Many fragments came together.... It started out with associating the title, Turn and Run , with the Doghouse project with Zuk, my dog, where we run up Mt Eden, so I had been running with a video camera in my hand; my children had been talking about the internet cafes they visit, the war games they played there; the tragic Bali incident had just happened and I was talking with my neighbours who have recently returned from work in war zones, I am inspired by the critical thinking and action by many of the people around me.

What's your dreamer project now?
RT: Lie on the lawn and look at the sky! I was in the rose gardens thinking that I could spend 12 months just painting roses, such colour. My dream project would be to create a non-visual experience of roses in olfaction so intense that the mind picture built around it would leave an image.

I'm working toward the manifestation of spaces and objects in real and virtual environments that are experienced in multisensory ways, not just as elements put together but as being generated firstly from the material information of say, the amount of light, the phrases of sound. When the sensory elements are put together they will hopefully create more integrated correspondences that may lead to different perceptual understandings of environments. The senses are for knowledge of the world but they can also be used for pleasure and joy.
I'm very excited about my collaboration with Tony Brooks online bio at the Global Education Team site http://www.get.vuurwerk.nl

We're developing interactive multisensory environments, the potential for participatory play spaces is enormous, imagine that by moving your body you could create environments - kind of like turning a kaleidescope, never the same thing twice and each creation so engaging, sound, light, colour, smell.

I've been working on a new generative art collaboration project with Mirjana Devetakovic Radojevic, Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Mirjana works with electronic environments and was until earlier this year in the Unitec architecture faculty.

It's called " Spatial Forms Generated by Music - The Case Study" which will be presented at the Generative Art Conference in Milano, Italy, in December. Mirjana has generated my drawings of music (Brahms Hungarian Dance 1) into architecture. This project opens up opportunities to create spaces related to sound - and the manifestation of spaces and objects that are experienced in multisensory ways, in real and virtual environments.

Where can we see the video?
Contact APRA MUSIC Aotearoa NZ
92 Parnell Rd, Parnell, Auckland
(0800 NZ APRA (69 2772)

Other web site showing Raewyn's work

http://www.false-emotion.de