Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion is showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 30 Jan – 2 May 2021 and 30 June – 10 October at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.
The Margel Hinder Immersive Project: simulating sculptural kinetics
The Margel Hinder Immersive Project simulates the original architectural contexts, aquatic physics and kinetic dynamics of two of Margel Hinder’s most important public sculptures: the decommissioned Northpoint Fountain, 1975, originally installed in the Northpoint shopping complex in North Sydney, and the extant Newcastle Civic Park Fountain, 1966. Both Margel Hinder Immersive I (Northpoint),2020, and Margel Hinder Immersive II (Civic Park), 2020, use cutting-edge visualisation and rendering techniques to recreate a sense of the original viewing positions and experiences that Hinder intended, at 1:1 scale. These new digital simulations, commissioned especially for Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion, enable the artist’s significant public art practice—which was at the height of its innovation and impact in the 1960s—to be displayed and experienced in the context of her broader oeuvre for the first time.
Simulating the original setting and operation of both works required detailed analysis of the physical environments of their installation. The project began with the 3-D scanning of both sculptures in their current condition using photogrammetry, a measurement technique whose foundations were established in the early days of photography. Current developments in the field allow for multiple photographs, taken while circumnavigating an object, to be correlated using reconstructive algorithms that map the spatial relationships between the features. This scanning resulted in highly accurate 3-D models which allowed for the subsequent reconstruction and restoration of the sculptures’ original forms.
Though Northpoint Fountain survives, it is heavily damaged. Previous attempts at restorative assessment have left large rends in its copper skin, resulting in the rusting of its internal armature. It is now supported by bolted-on trusses that have replaced the original support and kinetic mechanism, which rotated a spherical cage encompassing the fountainhead. The sculpture was removed from its original position in the atrium of the Northpoint building in 1992; the building has since been radically remodelled several times from its brutalist design, most recently in 2018.
No known moving images survive of the operation of Northpoint Fountain, though photographs of Hinder testing the fountainhead at her Sydney home provided a reference for the aquatic aesthetics. Damaged and missing elements from the sculpturewere reconstructed with reference to Hinder’s original drawings, which show the rotational mechanisms and aquatic structure, as well as a plaster maquette which survives in the collection of the Manly Art Gallery & Museum. The maquette, also 3-D scanned, is surprisingly accurate to scale and provided one other missing piece of the puzzle. Built on a plinth comprised of a modified record turntable, when operated it demonstrated the rotational speed designed by Hinder for the central kinetic element that could be replicated in the digital simulation.
Newcastle Civic Park Fountain, arguably Hinder’s magnum opus,still occupies its original site, where its bold and futuristic vision won it notoriety and an iconic place in what was then an ambitious plan for a central parkland in Newcastle’s civic district. However, the environment and architecture has changed significantly in the intervening half century, altering the work’s sensory space . Archival images provided evidence for the fountain’s original context. For example, a photograph of Hinder in a conical hat and workers gloves taken during the construction of the fountain by renowned architect Brian Suters, who coordinated the Civic Park development, reveals long since removed lighting fixtures leading to the sculpture from Laman Street, as well as original wooden handrails that seem at odds with Hinder’s aesthetic and which were eventually replaced. The cover of a local phone directory and that of the Christmas 1966 edition of the Stewarts and Lloyds Recreation Club Recreation News showed the nascent garden beds and plantings of the new park. Colour images of the fountain in the 1980s by photographer Percy Sternbeck showed the development of these plantings along Laman Street and how significantly the surrounding space had evolved. The architecture of the pond and superstructure were meticulously reconstructed from the original engineering sections by Wilson, Barnett & Suters Architects, and the location and operation of the water jets were matched to the detailed maintenance manual provided by the firm.
Importantly, the aesthetics of the immersive reconstructions were based on two forms of digital material simulation. Firstly, the visual appearance of the sculptures in their original condition was created using a computer graphics technique known as ‘physics-based rendering’, in which the behaviour of the surface textures is programmed to respond to lighting and environmental effects with the physical properties of real, patinated copper. The same process was used to determine the appearance of wear on architectural features, such as sun bleaching and verdigris. The aquatic simulations followed this focus on physical and environmental modelling. Each water jet was modelled using particle physics, according to Hinder’s plans, and tested for its behaviour against the surface of the 3-D reconstructions in order to bring to life the complex dynamics of her vision. The visualisations are presented in this exhibition as high-resolution projections, and the simulation has also been adapted for virtual reality headsets for future use.
The use of reconstructive and simulative methods is not new to museology, though social and natural history institutions have mostly moved away from traditional, and problematic, anthropological-style model tableaux towards digital platforms developed by cultural heritage researchers. Australian practitioners in particular have excelled at pioneering digital and immersive methods for analysing archaeological sites and their socioeconomic contexts,[1] reconstructing important sculptures using 3-D modelling and typological analysis,[2] as well as visualising and archiving threatened cultural sites using immersive technologies.[3] The use of these strategies in fine arts museums, however, remains under explored.
In recent years the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Heide
Museum of Modern Art have presented new approaches to immersive museology with
exhibitions that have employed technologies ranging from virtual and augmented
realities to particle accelerator conservation science imaging, in order to engage
audiences with histories of materiality and the lives of objects. These
projects necessarily thread a line between investigating the lived culture of
artefacts and remediating the work of significant artists. Before considering this
kind of experimental reconstruction, we must first ask what the new work can
contribute to our understanding that other forms of representation—such as the
simple act of exhibiting archival photography—cannot. In our case, the Margel
Hinder Immersive Project demonstrates how digital processes can be used
sympathetically to investigate works of art, to restore something of a lost
work’s visage, and to provide material data that may be used for future
conservation work and to better inform the representation of an artist’s
oeuvre.
[1] Tom Chandler, Brent McKee, Elliott Wilson, Mike Yeates and Martin Polkinghorne, ‘A New Model of Angkor Wat: Simulated Reconstruction as a Methodology for Analysis and Public Engagement’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 17, no. 2, 2017, pp. 182–94.
[2] Marnie Feneley, ‘Reconstructing God: Proposing a New Date for the West Mebon Vişņu, Using Digital Reconstruction and Artefactual Analysis’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 17, no. 2, 2017, pp. 195–220.
[3] Sarah Kenderdine, ‘“Pure Land”: Inhabiting the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang’, Curator, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 199–218.