dog daze (2017, dur: 4:03)

“as cool as marrowbone jelly, I’m on to you… I can track the droplets of fear, bare-boned on your long and solitary road… too late now to call for your doctor… I have all the time in the world…”

This video began life as part of a David Bowie tribute gig, organised by Paroxysm Press in Adelaide for which I wrote the text and music. The music is loosely based on the chord progression of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs. The video uses footage taken mostly around the Adelaide CBD. My aim was to make a dystopian version of the city using complex compositing and animation techniques. I also made some of my own special effects for it.

The video has had incredible success, having been screened at 14 festivals or events around the world including UK, USA, Sweden, Moscow, and Vienna. It was selected as Best Video Poem, 2018 Film and Video Poetry Symposium (Los Angeles, 26-29 April, 2018); gained an Honorable Mention for Best Animation at Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival (Massachusetts, 20 October, 2018); and was an official selection at major short film festivals in UK (Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, 2019; Newlyn Short Film Festival, 2019) and Sweden (At The Fringe, Tranås, 2020).

In an unusual turn-around, as a consequence of the success of the video, the text was anthologised in Solid Air: Australian and New Zealand Spoken Word (eds David Stavanger & Anne-Marie Te Whiu, UQP, 2019).

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Ian Gibbins is a widely published poet, video artist and electronic musician. His videos have been shown to acclaim at festivals, exhibitions, commissioned public art programs and installations around the world and have won or been short-listed for multiple awards. His videos have gained more than 5000 views on his Vimeo channel. In 2020 alone, 18 of his videos have been screened in more than 50 international festivals and events.

Ian’s poetry has been short-listed for national prizes and selected for several anthologies, including Best Australian Poems. Ian has produced four collections of poetry: Urban Biology (2012); The Microscope Project: How Things Work (2014, with artists Catherine Truman and Deb Jones); Floribunda (2015, with artist Judy Morris) and A Skeleton of Desire (2019).

Ian has collaborated widely with artists on projects bridging art and science, culminating in several major exhibitions (2009, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020) and two projects with Australian Dance Theatre.

Until his retirement in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia, having originally trained as a zoologist. He still lives on Kaurna land in South Australia.

For details of Ian’s creative work, visit http://www.iangibbins.com.au.
For his videos, visit: http://vimeo.com/iangibbins
For his audio, visit: http://iangibbins.bandcamp.com/
Social media: http://www.facebook.com/IanGibbins.poetry.music.science

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