[Interview] Daniel Askill on Virtual Reality, Collaborations, and Installations

With over 1.5 billion views on YouTube, if you haven’t heard of Australian director Daniel Askill, you’ve most likely seen his videos. He’s most known for his work with Sia, particularly for directing her Grammy-nominated videos for ‘Chandelier’ and ‘Elastic Heart’. Anyone who puts Shia LaBoeuf and a 12-year-old girl in a cage fighting situation has to be a creative risk-taker, right? But Daniel Askill’s approach is more complex than shock tactics. He operates across film, photography, video installation, and most recently, virtual reality. He employs different technologies to create works that are thoughtful, sensual, and which often examine the relationship between the human state and elemental forces. We had a chat with him ahead of Sugar Mountain this coming weekend in Melbourne, where he is showing two video installations that will be presented in Australia for the first time.

The Creators Project: Can you tell us about what you’re bringing over for Sugar Mountain?

Daniel Askill: One work is a video triptych, and one’s a single channel video. It deals with ideas around the human spirit and water, and the transformational properties of that. The music was written by my father Michael Askill and is a score composed around Tibetan singing bowls, and that kind of soundscape.

It seems like water is quite a theme in your work.

I guess fundamentally I’ve always been into elemental forces, and the power of transformation. So yeah—water, fire, and, air. And sometimes forms of our making; it could be glass or machines.

Do you particularly enjoy creating installations?

Absolutely. It’s a different kind of relationship with someone than working on a music video that’s going to end up on YouTube that people are going to watch on their mobile phones or while they’re hanging out with their friends. That leads you to make work for that environment that’s a bit more—direct isn’t the word, but it has to be able to catch someone’s attention a little faster and in a bit more of a direct way. But what’s good about a video installation is that there’s more space for subtlety, and space for things that evolve more slowly, and often with less editorial.

Are you interested in using new technology?

Yeah, I never make it the focus of why the idea is coming to life, but I certainly do love it as a tool. I mean even with these two installations [showing at Sugar Mountain], one of them uses phantom cameras—that is, extreme high speed cameras—and the other one is actually shot on a bullet time rig, similar to the thing people are used to seeing in the Matrix and stuff. I always find the key with all that [technology] stuff is to make sure you’re still focused on the underlying idea and making sure it’s still about a mood and a feeling.

You’ve been working on a virtual reality piece. How has that been going?

It’s been really interesting doing that because there’s a whole new language in that. Obviously the biggest thing is the frame—you’re not controlling someone’s frame of view anymore. Everything is happening in 360-degrees and the viewer can look wherever they want, just like you can in real life. What becomes interesting is how you play out that experience for the audience—whether you’re trying to guide their eye around the space to tell a particular story, or whether it’s something more experiential where you’re just dropping someone into a world that they have to discover on their own.

When they first showed films in the theatres some people would run outside because it seemed too real. Virtual reality feels like the next step.

It kind of does in a way. The resolution still isn’t the best, and the headgear is still a bit clumsy, but I think we’re just at the beginning. When it gets to the point where you don’t have to put the goggles on—it’s on the inside of contact lenses or something—and the resolution is comparable to real life, it’s going to be this slippage into real life; a very blurry line between what is reality and non-reality…. It leads down a pretty crazy rabbit hole.

Do you collaborate a lot?

I do seem to collaborate a lot, particularly with my brothers and my family, and other people like my friend Sia. It’s always great because it forces you into territory that maybe isn’t necessarily your comfort zone, but hopefully something interesting comes out of that.

Obviously your collaborations with Sia are a really big deal. Have they changed your life?

It was amazing being part of something that had that kind of impact on pop culture. It certainly seems to have opened a few doors and expanded my interests creatively. So yes, it was definitely a special project for me.

To learn more about Daniel Askill you can go here. Sugar Mountain 2016 takes place on Sat Jan 23 at the Victorian College of the Arts and Melbourne Arts Precinct. Click here for more info and tickets.

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