STRANGE ENGINE PRESENTS

DIAGRAMMATICA

Diagrams, as visual tools, sit at the intersection of logic, abstraction, and imagination. They hold a unique place in our search for meaning, functioning as mediators between the known and the unknown. Charles Sanders Peirce described them as “moving pictures of thought,” he saw them as crucial to forming knowledge, but beyond their function as cognitive tools, diagrams also hint at something more transcendent. They suggest new configurations of being, helping us to visualize relationships, structures, and processes that are often invisible. They can serve as portals to ineffable ideas.

Diagrammatica is a genre-defying artwork: part drawing, durational performance, and musical composition, it invites people into a constantly evolving system of meaning-making. Built from hundreds of interconnected visual fragments inspired by physics and astral photography, an expansive, evolving “diagram” is continually shaped and re-imagined by rotating teams of participants in a hidden location. Musicians respond to the shifting tableau as a graphic score, using a custom built, hyper-directional audio system to create a live soundscape.

Diagrammatica is an immersive, collective search for cosmology, connection, and coherence.

The project will be presented in the 2025 Rising festival

Federation Square atrium and beneath

JUNE 3rd - 15th

DEVELOPMENT TEAM:

Lead Artist, Host and Component Maker - Jason Maling

Sound Design and Live Performance - Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey

Film Design and Live Performance - Rhian Hinkley

Spatial Design - Chantal Marks

Workwear Design and Production - Andrew Treloar

Lighting Design - Katie Sfetkidis

Host and Component Production Assistant - Torie Nimmervoll

Host and Workwear Production Assistant - Charlie Lee

Producer (Sage Arts) - Michaela Coventry

Strange Engine Executive Producer - Anna Schoo

Outside Eye - Martyn Coutts

Graphic Design - Dan Milne and Liz Cox

Speaker Design Consultant - Robert Larson

Online Session Archive Assembly- Mick Byrne

Technical Consultant - Tom McKeand

Component Production Assistant -Olie Kennedy

Guest Musicians

Kaylie Melville, Moses Carr, Mindy Meng Wang, Nadav Rayman, Golden Sands, Helen Svoboda, Ohmi (Lachlan Thompson), Genevieve Lacey & Marshall McGuire, and more to be announced

Diagrammatica has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.