D’Arcy’s Digital Dream Quilt
Moving Image Public Art Commission

City of Sydney - Olympic Park
2019

D’Arcy’s Digital Dream Quilt is a 3 minute looped video projection artwork that remixes the history of Sydney’s Olympic Park community into a giant animated digital quilt. The work, created specifically for the Pullman Projection site, consists of panels of looped animated gifs that form together to create a long, vertical scrolling quilt.

The animation begins as we watch D’arcy Wentworth settle into sleep under his family quilt. Wentworth, a surgeon, was originally granted the land that is now known as Sydney Olympic Park as a white settler in the 1790’s. His quilt comes to life in the work, telling odd but authentic elements of the areas history from 1790 through to today.

The quilt was a common historical storytelling device in colonial times. It was used to tell family, community and geographic histories to future generations. The quilt is used to reflect the colonial context that begins the narrative, but also to create a community centred work with the charm and approachability of folk art storytelling.

Animated gif visual language helps link the quilt to contemporary storytelling. Gif culture shares a lot of similarities with quilt culture in it’s ability to tell stories made from scraps and offcuts of cultural artefacts. This lends the work a grassroots, folk art spirit.

The final work can be seen below.