Kim Newall: Wandering Creatures

Digital Art Live and Auckland Zoo present the interactive exhibition Wandering Creatures by Kim Newall as part of Auckland Fringe.

Artist Kim Newall creates imaginative, hybrid, creatures with legs like pigs, beaks like birds or trunks like elephants. These creatures are made using of a mix traditional drawing and animation methods, and digital interactive media. The creatures exist in the space between digital and physical and evolve their unique identities through audience engagement.

The Creatures will take up roost at Auckland Zoo as a way of gaining acceptance from the physical world. Participants will activate the roosted creatures by jumping, walking or mimicking their actions, and the creatures in turn respond to this attention in an attempt to be liked and accepted by the world.

The creatures also like to explore their environment. In fact, this may lead to a few of them jumping out of their roosting to explore the Zoo and the city. After scanning their traces, participants will be able to see them in the streets, on building facades, in trees and on hillsides. Some guided tours around the Zoo and the city will help to track their wanderings.

Wandering Creatures is the evolution of the interactive exhibition ‘Roosting’ (presented at Digital Art Live in 2011) and ‘Urban Life’ (2008) where two birds perched on the back of the old Odeon Cinema on Lorne Street responding to passers and the environment. Watch out some wandering creatures could inhabit a space near you!