Focusing on architecture, interior design, contemporary art and social practice, Campbell Drake Studio is a multi disciplinary design studio that seeks to challenge conventional interpretations of interior design and architecture through ideas led practice and research.
‘Spatial Tuning’ explores the performative potential of the piano to renegotiate situations, subjects and environments. In response to the ‘Intervening in the Anthropocenes’ call for greater immersive and sensory engagement with the spatio-temporalities of landscape, I first salvaged, then relocated, a piano within the threshold between Mt Wellington National Park and the McRobies Gully Waste Management Centre. Located at the western end of McRobies Road in South Hobart, The McRobies Gully Waste Management Centre has been in operation since 1975 and occupies approximately 20 hectares in the foothills of Mt Wellington. Questioning the nature of adulterated / unadulterated environmental conditions and human / non human agency within the contested boundary condition between national park and land fill, a local piano tuner was commissioned to tune the instrument for a duration of two and a half hours. Exploring the politics of space specific to waste, landfill and environmental degradation, Spatial Tuning sought to collapse the distance between passive spectators and the McRobbies Tip through an invitation to the PSi Performance + Design Working Group, an audience of 16 people, to experience the event for a duration of thirty minutes on the afternoon of Tuesday the 28th of June.