You’ll be sorry you ever stepped foot in the place!
Random Number Generator (2018) | Soundtrack by Christine Tammer | Film by Erin M McCuskey | Songs by Christine Tammer & Annie Drum | Dir: 11mins | 5 Channels
An audio-visual collaboration on addictive gambling, poker machines and loss. Originally commissioned by David Atkins for White Night Ballarat 2018.
Random Number Generator is a multi-channel film and audio installation, featuring songs from the new cabaret The Venue, created by Christine Tammer. Musically, the work takes inspiration from the inner workings of poker machines, programmed to make a huge profit for the venue. Her work dives beneath layers set to illicit our Pavlov’s Dog response, and then soars with big hearted understanding of addiction. Tammer’s sound track is breath taking.
Random Number Generator (RNG) is the latest venue, and all is not what it seems. Behind the glitz and allure of the façade, a clock without hands spins endlessly, light chases through no window and the walls surround with menace hidden under a smile. The audience become a shadow of themselves, the gambler. Do they know what they are playing with?
Visually the work draws a garish nightmare, a pokies venue, unconscionable conduct and the deception by design which promises love, luck and a winning life. Yum Studio uses colour and contrast to produce moments of meditation surrounded by the discombobulation of entrapment to the god of poker machines.
ARTIST BIOS
Christine Tammer
Chris is a composer, arranger, musician and vocal improv teacher. She creates delicate intricate works that shake the emotions, using layers of polyphonic textures. Recent works include composing and producing for the 24 Hour Experience (Ballarat) and the Metanoia Theatre (MilkBars).
Erin M McCuskey
Erin is a multimedia and film artist with a reputation for working in the space between art and cinema. She is the author of transmedia project Luxville, with commissions for Finucane & Smith, City of Ballarat, Art Gallery of Ballarat and screenings at Melbourne International Film Festival and Gertrude Street Projection Festival.
RECENT COLLABORATIVE WORKS
Twirl de Lux short art film.
An Indelicate Performance a portrait of Lola Montez for the Digital Portraiture Award.
Silver Rememberings a commissioned piece on cinema history.
Arising music clip.
WORKS SPECS
- Video 3-5-7 Channel 1920 x 1080p (1.0), 25fps,
- Apple ProRes [.mov]
- (1 Channel linked to Audio)
- Audio 48Hz Stereo
- Dur: 12mins looping
Space requirements:
Random Number Generator requires a space not impacted by direct light or external sound. It’s premiere was in a small hall in Camp Street Ballarat, the Old Sheriff’s Office. It would work within a dilapidated building, pristine gallery environment or outside. A dark quiet space that allows the audience to sit and feel surrounded, to feel their own sense of self and the pull of the machine, in that dark.
CREDIT LIST
Commissioned by David Atkins for White Night Ballarat
Handler Felicity Hollingbery DAE White Night Pty Ltd
SOUND Christine Tammer
FILM Erin M McCuskey – Yum Studio
SONGS Christine Tammer & Annie Drum
CAST
- Amy Tsilemanis
- Lindsay Bingham
- Dulcie Corbett
- Chris Tammer
- Annie Drum
- Melanie Rae Smith
VOICE Nelson Mathews
CHORUS
- Annie Drum
- Al Wunder
- Barry James Gilson
- Jill Clarke
- Erin McCuskey
- Michael Gwyther
- Robyn Sedgwick
- Christine Tammer
MOVING IMAGE
Camera: Erin M McCuskey [with thanks to Sarah Duguid for bug footage]
ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE
Le Roi des Dollars (1905) by Segundo de Chomón [Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.]
Betsy Ross Dance (1903) American Mutoscope and Biograph Company [Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.]
Quiet Worlds [Internet Archive Collection]
‘The Human Dynamo’ Georgia Sothern [Internet Archive]
Margit & Margot [found footage – please contact for full acknowledgement]
How a Watch Works (1949) Hamilton Watch Company [National Watch and Clock Museum]
Exercise and Health (1949) Coronet Instructional Films [Prelinger Archives]
THANK YOU
Annie Drum
Megan Riedl Tripwire Theatre (Initiation)
Michael Gwyther Yum Studio (CoProduction)
Paul & Sharon McCuskey (Location)
