Virtual sculpture to set hearts racing
	Canberra School of Art sculpture student Hamilton Darroch attempts to navigate the virtual maze
By Damon Shorter Ask Jane Hanson about her latest sculpture and her animated conversation flounders as she searches for the right words. "I call it a virtual maze, but it is not really virtual at all," she offers finally. It is an understandable hesitation. Her sculpture, which forms part of an honours degree in Visual Arts at the Canberra School of Art, is, paradoxically, invisible - an empty room at first glance. Yet try to walk through it and a cacophony of noise erupts from nowhere. The only way to cross the room without giving yourself a headache, is to follow your ears and the sound of gentle pulsations that lead to the other side. "I set the challenge of creating a sculpture that dealt with space but not in a conventional sense," she explained. "I wanted to put a contemporary spin on it, so I took away more and more boundaries until there was nothing left but sound." Three digital cameras suspended unobtrusively from the ceiling track the explorer as they negotiate the maze. Positional information from the cameras is fed into a computer which matches the person's location with an electronic maze plan and blares at them if they step out of line. And to stop anyone remembering the route, the pattern is constantly changed. In a neat Orwellian twist, the explorers of the artwork are themselves subject to scrutiny. Electronic sensors strapped to their body record their heart rate, breathing, muscle movements, brain waves and sweating throughout the ordeal. These responses are relayed live to monitors outside so spectators can judge how individuals fare during their stressful journey. "When I was designing it, I spoke with several neurosurgeons who all said it couldn't be done," Jane Hanson said. "But I didn't take no for an answer." Instead, she convinced a Melbourne-based company, Compumedics, to donate all the electronic sensing equipment, some of which had to be custom-built. Canberra computer company Aspect Computing agreed to lend her all the computer hardware she needed and the motion-detection devices were provided by Chubb Security. "The equipment itself is fairly dry, so when I offer to put it in an exciting application like this, it renews people's interest," she said. The computer-tracking software has an interesting history. It was designed in 1979 by a student from the Canberra School of Music, Simon Veitch, as a tool for creating electronic music. Later, he realised the software was ideal for security movement detectors, and formed a company to sell it. Chubb Security now market the program as the "3DIS Security System", which keeps a vigilant eye on several Australian prisons, rail yards and the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor site in Sydney. Although Mr Veitch admits he is still most interested in the program's creative applications, he says he has spent the last decade "in jail or up to my knees in nuclear waste" working on different security jobs. "It is just a boring old security camera most of the time," Jane Hanson says "but then it has this other life as a work of art." Her finished sculpture will be on display at Questacon ­ The National Science and Technology Centre later in the year, where she hopes thousands will have the chance to try it out for themselves. After leaving a career in journalism to become a professional artist, Jane Hanson says she can't believe how lucky she is. "I love it and it is a privilege to be able to do it."