Earth, Water & Fire: The Art Of Immersing Audiences In The Elements

Can you handle it?

Shivering in the winter chill of Hobart's Macquarie Point during Dark Mofo's inaugural Dark Park in 2015, immersed in the visceral thrill of intriguing art experiences, were turbo-charged installation artists Christian Wagstaff and Keith Courtney's ambitions.

"It really was the turning point for us," Wagstaff tells The Music. "We spent a fortune going to absolutely every show that year and were absolutely entranced. We knew we had to get involved."

Chasing down a meeting with Dark Mofo's creative director Leigh Carmichael was the hardest part. When they finally got a face-to-face, Carmichael jumped on their pitch for what would become House Of Mirrors, the visually arresting labyrinth populated by countless reflections of enthralled visitors. Debuting at Dark Mofo the very next year, it has subsequently toured the nation as well as hopping over to Auckland and Singapore, touching down in Melbourne last year as a literally glittering highlight of the Melbourne Festival.

Now renamed the Melbourne International Arts Festival (MIAF), Wagstaff and Courtney's grand vision of immersive art is set to captivate audiences once more as their latest maze, 1000 Doors, take over the Arts Centre forecourt again. Unlike House Of Mirrors, over which the Arts Centre spire towered, this time a roof will cap the experience.

"It's more claustrophobic this time, a pressure cooker," Wagstaff notes. "We wanted to push the boundaries a bit more. It's about memories, about smelling things and touching surfaces, feeling different textures under your feet. We want to do something analogue, more connected to your physical self."

Comprised of corridors, anterooms and vestibules, Wagstaff says the many doors involved lead absolutely nowhere. "There's no final destination. It's a metaphor for life really, an ongoing disappointment."

Cackling wickedly, Wagstaff hopes that people will be overwhelmed in the most wonderful way by 1000 Doors' twisting, turning, transitional spaces, tapping into ancient mythology with a handful of carnie's magic dust. And if he and Courtney have their way, these companion pieces will someday collide, post-MIAF, wildly magnifying their discombobulating effect. "Our art is the experience people have in there, in the moment."

Get lit

Just a short stroll across St Kilda Road, humming with the 'ding ding' of trundling trams, the Royal Botanic Gardens will light up after dark in another of MIAF's large-scale immersive experiences. French outfit Compagnie Carabosse will transform the lush green space into Fire Gardens through their haunting use of blazing sculptures.

Working with the elemental power humanity has harnessed since our earliest days is thrilling, says Carabosse's Stephanie Auger. "Just like water, it can be both terrifying and mesmerising, almost hypnotic, and a real moment of poetry."

Though their trademark burning pots appear consistently, each installation is unique, with preparation for Fire Gardens beginning in 2016. Two scouts assessed several possible sites, diligently measuring out their intricacies, with the Royal Botanic Gardens instantly capturing the team's imagination.

Once a plan is drawn up, they build everything they need from scratch in their warehouse back in St-Christophe-sur-Roc, a village-turned-artists' commune in Western France, before shipping it out and constructing in situ. 

"Each one of these installations is an occasion," Auger says. "We shut down the city lights and the fire does all the rest. That darkness mixed with the flames gives a real cosy feeling to it all. Fire lights everything differently, creating new ways to look at and appreciate the space you are in."

Those spaces have included the Kremlin in Moscow, England's eerie Stonehenge and an abandoned Moroccan prison, but wherever they have landed in their 20-year-plus career, Auger says Compagnie Carabosse always conducts itself with "great respect of the place where we are invited".

With musicians concealed in the trees and on the water, Fire Gardens is set to enchant. "It's important to us that the public feels free to go about the show in any way they wish," Auger says. "They can walk freely, spend as much time as they want and come back around later on. That way, every person attending creates their own visit. Thanks to the night and the fire, there is a quiet atmosphere and a serenity that we find the public respect."

Dive in 

Arguably the most immersive experience on offer at this year's MIAF, and one of the most topical too, is Curious Directive's Frogman. Presented at St Kilda's Theatre Works, it's a theatrical experience with a difference, augmented by virtual reality (VR) headsets. Set in and around the shallows of the Great Barrier Reef, it's also a missing person drama told in two distinct time periods, exploring how darkness encroached on childhood imagination.

British-based director Jack Lowe acknowledges that 360-degree film could be seen as the antithesis of theatre. "Film often offers our mind specific imagery and representations, something literal, whereas theatre works more from and with metaphor, but mixing the two does do something very unusual," he says. "It gives you a sensation of being in a room with a community of people, then the more solitary experience of a film."

The idea for the story came about when he was diving at the reef while on holiday and wondered what it would be like to take a theatre audience underwater with him. "Our work is story-driven, so it felt important to use the VR masks as more than diving masks, so we also go back in time using them. We've had audiences of all ages and rarely does someone come with much expectation as to what the show is going to entail, which is unusual for theatre."

The company's first time working with VR, the challenges of underwater filming on a shoestring budget were considerable, but Lowe hopes MIAF audiences will be impressed with the results, particularly as the fate of the natural wonder in question is fraught with question marks amid political inaction.

"It's really difficult talking with our collaborators about the status of the reef," he says. "It's an incredibly difficult time and the only way to help things, it seems, is to keep it in everyone's minds. Maybe this show does that on some level."

1000 Doors is at the Arts Centre Melbourne until 21 Oct; Fire Gardens is at the Royal Botanic Gardens from 10 Oct; Frogman plays Theatre Works from 11 Oct. The Melbourne International Arts Festival starts on 3 Oct and runs throughout the month.