Digital Wall Exhibition: Wander and Dwell
Image credits: John Power, still from Wander and Dwell 2025, generative digital artwork, image supplied by artist.
Digital Wall Exhibition: Wander and Dwell
November 2025 - February 2026
Bunjil Place Foyer
The Digital Wall in the Bunjil Place foyer is a digital gallery space that exhibits video art and generative works. Over the next three months we present the generative digital artwork Wander and Dwell, aligning with the Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Spiders of Paradise exhibition in the Bunjil Place Gallery.
Wander and Dwell
Generative digital artwork by John Power.
Wander and Dwell is a calm, immersive imagining of the ecosystems of the Central Coast beach, estuaries, and hinterland regions that include habitats that support the Paradise Spider. The work responds to the natural topography, where deep time echoes through stratified colours of sandstone, conjuring apparitions which lead the wanderer down forking paths.
Through pencilling fern-light, the hinterland rainfall flows into estuarine mangrove stands and across the rippling surface of a lake on its way to the thrumming surf. Fascinated and buffeted by soaring cliffs, the traveller returns to the embrace of ancient casuarinas.
Real-time 3D and data-driven approaches are mingled with painterly methods to create the virtual light, landscape, and atmosphere.
Geospatial surveys of the terrain—Darkinjung country—inform generative rendering of the various biomes, the astronomical passage of the sky, and real-time regional weather. The gently roaming panoramic view is motivated by algorithmic wayfinding across the terrain, weather conditions, and trailing memory of paths travelled. The overall system means that, unlike a film or video, the work can practically never repeat. The dwelling aspect of the work allows the visitor to calmly orient themselves in the space in ways that link to ancient practices of repose, reverie, and reflection.
The work draws upon deep traditions of reverential dwelling through contemporary neurological theories of orientation and attention. The work is a continuation of research into how large public screens can be deployed as a technology to return attention, rather than grasping it. This approach resists the culture of distraction that is prevalent in the 21st century through digital screens and non-linear media.
Rather than distracting, the gentle kinaesthetic continuity in Wander and Dwell connects with the healthful effects of nature walks or “forest bathing” that can recalibrate a natural sense of time and cosmic orientation.
Originally commissioned by Central Coast Council and Gosford Regional Gallery, Gosford, New South Wales.
John Power is a new media artist, teacher, producer, and interdisciplinary researcher with a background in visual art, spectacle, digital placemaking, and creative community engagement. A senior lecturer in the School Design, RMIT University, Power’s award‐winning time-based practice in video and public installations incorporates generative Art, real‐time VR, AR, VFX, and ambient screen media that has toured and exhibited in Australia and internationally. His research explores the use of public digital screens as Calm Technology for attention restoration and placemaking.
johnpower.com.au
