Daniel von Sturmer
The Field Equation

Daniel von Sturmer cre­at­ed an active land­scape of visu­al events and exper­i­ments in ACCA’s huge com­mis­sion hall for the 2006 Helen Macpher­son Smith Commission.

Von Sturmer’s prac­tice draws on a range of media to exper­i­ment with the rela­tion­ship between pic­to­r­i­al space, real space and the record­ed space cre­at­ed in mov­ing images. The works were con­cerned with the appre­hen­sion of space and time, and the way in which video can ren­der these mal­leable and elas­tic, test­ing propo­si­tions about what is real. Von Sturmer’s videos fea­ture every­day objects and mate­ri­als assum­ing a visu­al order and sta­bil­i­ty that is then called into ques­tion. Aspects of mod­ernism and min­i­mal­ism, abstrac­tion and still life were also ref­er­enced and replayed to pro­voke a con­sid­er­a­tion of the visu­al lan­guage we rely on to describe and define the exter­nal world. The Field Equa­tion offered a fab­u­lous com­bi­na­tion of sci­en­tif­ic exam­i­na­tion and sen­so­ry cap­ti­va­tion. Von Sturmer’s works brought to life ideas of per­cep­tion, paint­ing, sculp­ture, kinet­ics and reflec­tion. Daniel von Sturmer: The Field Equa­tion was the sec­ond Helen Macpher­son Smith Com­mis­sion. Com­mis­sion­ing Cura­tor: Juliana Engberg