Dea et Luna is site-specific work made for the Luton Hoo Arts project 2010, and was first shown as an audio-video installation at the Luton Hoo Walled Garden. It is inspired by a newspaper article from 23rd January 1772 that reported that at 1.30 am that morning the moon had descended on Luton Hoo Estate.

Credits: Joanna Austin (video), Roberto Filoseta (soundtrack), Sonya Chenery (actress), Sonya Chenery & Suzanne Page (research and creative input), Lorna Reay (voice).

Exhibited at:

• Luton Hoo Arts Programme, 2010
• The Cutting Room, at Nottingham Playhouse, 2010
• UH Galleries Open Exhibition (winner of), 2010
• London Short Film Festival, 2011
• Wells Arts Contemporary, 2012
• CineSonika Festival, 2013

Icara-Icara is a reworking of the Icarus myth from a female perspective. Icara wants to fly. She knows well what happened to Icarus, who dared to fly and fell, who tasted freedom and died. Still, she leaps into the void to find herself and freedom. And she is not content to keep to the safe path traced by Daedalus: for Icara, flying means much more than landing safely to a known destination, it means unbounded search and fearless discovery.

Conceived for projection in a specially designed chamber, the work exploits several perceptual strategies aimed at providing an immersive audience experience. The particular angle and distance of the projection walls envelops the viewer and gives rise to a stereo image – two separate streams of visual information that are channelled discretely (to a degree) through each eye and are then re-combined in the brain. The large mirror covering the entire back wall further augments audience participation by reflecting at once the viewers and the 2 screens, thus placing the viewers inside the screened images and making them, effectively, part of the artwork.

Four channels of surround audio are delivered by speakers concealed in the chamber’s walls, conveying spatial cues that draw the audio-viewers in the midst of the action, transporting them from the claustrophobic setting of the protagonist’s suburban dwelling to the limitless space, as the action takes to the open sky.

Credits: Joanna Austin (video installation) & Roberto Filoseta (sound), Kate Wiggs (actress), Lorna Reay (voice).

Exhibited at:

• UH Galleries at St Albans Museum, UK, Jan–Mar 2012

Split-screen / stereo-sound viewing copy (for illustration only):

Credits: Joanna Austin (video, sound and actress).

Exhibited at:

• +42 Degrees Fahrenheit, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London, 2009
• Degree Show, University of Hertfordshire, video installation, 2009
• 23rd Festival Les Instants Vidéo, Marseille, France, television

Credits: Joanna Austin (video, sound, actress).

Exhibited at:

• +42 Degrees Fahrenheit, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London, 2009

Credits: Joanna Austin (video and sound), Kate Wiggs (actress).

Exhibited at:

• Danger, Rag Factory, London, video installation

Credits: Joanna Austin (video); music by Owcxarek Caicedo Ponds Trio – 114.

Gone but not forgotten. An animation of the Margaret Harvey Gallery, St Albans, in 2008.

Credits: Joanna Austin (video).