The Very Near Future – Sydney Festival

Overview

Guardian Australia art critic Andrew Frost picked out two highlights from last year's International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA). One was Ryoji Ikeda's Test Pattern, a rolling strobe light of sound and thunder that invited the public into a vertiginous bay of the Carriageworks. The other was Alex Davies' the Very Near Future, an experiential installation that notionally takes you onto a trip 30 seconds into the future. This month, Sydney Festival restages the Very Near Future out of conference, in the much more public surrounds of Woolloomooloo's Artspace.

Davies says one of his ambitions with the installation was “trying to represent time travel”. That is, let you feel like you're peering through a cut in time and space. He crafts his illusion by sending you trailing around a large-scale film set. As you explore, the film crew try to produce a little film noir, but accidentally explore a repeating multiverse of events, Groundhog Day-style. It's no trillion-year hop into the future, but rather an appealing chance to find out if this small-scale future will play out as planned.

Image: Alex Davies, The Very Near Future,  2013, installation view, Carriageworks, courtesy of the artist.