(AUS): October – December 2012

About Grant

Grant is a performance and media artist from Sydney Australia working with interactive forms in order to increase agency and encourage a playful disregard for warranties and social norms. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Science (psychology) and Arts (performance) as well as an Honours in performance at UNSW (University of New South Wales). His honours focussed on using a form of theatre he is developing to investigate ways that theatre can be a place for the rehearsal of our ethical beliefs. Outside of university he has worked with Shopfront Theatre as a workshop leader, artist and IT technician; in 2011 he engaged in a 7 month residency there creating the form of theatre he has continued to investigate (involving instructions delivered by synchronised headphones to audience members who then proceed to perform the entire show to a seated audience). He was able to get over to Blast Theory on the BBM scholarship which he was awarded for his performance works and particularly the piece THE SPACE HAS BEEN LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK that he had created at Shopfront.

The Internship

I had a blast over my 3(ish) months with Blast Theory. I had studied them extensively at University, so having the opportunity to meet them all was amazing. Whilst there I was engaged heavily with the debugging and setup of Hurricane (a large touch-table that is now installed in Geneva). I was tasked with setting up the debugging interface and a number of the windows specific settings which involved the generation of a large number of small scripts. This was perhaps the most enjoyable part of my internship. Throughout my time I was asked to improve certain processes which required me to create scripts and processes which was a very exciting thing to do for a company with such a long history and such complex procedures.

Being at Blast Theory means you are being surrounded by some of the most incredible and inspiring artists. Sitting at the table at lunch time sometimes becomes a passionate and fascinating conversation about film, art, politics and technology… and sometimes just involves someone playing templerun and everyone else either eating in silence or laying exhausted on the couch.

Blast Theory is an amazing company with an impressive history and the volunteer role is an extremely rewarding and enjoyable one that I recommend to anyone!