Commissioned for the Next Wave Festival’s Next Wave Time Lapse program at Federation Square, Melbourne, A Someone Else’s Problem Field is essentially fiction disguised as reality: augmented reality. It is a simple sleight-of-hand act that invokes the wonder and curiosity of childhood to re-imagine what the world is, and could be.

The work takes Federation Square as its subject, and, through the use of the Square’s live camera, morphs and warps the space’s surrounding buildings. It is, as Lachlan himself describes, a work based on childhood fantasy and the extremes of imagination:

“Within my public media arts practice I’m particularly interested in stimulating the imagination of people in order to rediscover their urban environments. Through doing this, I also look to facilitate collective communal experiences that exist outside conventional arts spaces. In the tradition of many digital and non-digital public intervention artists, A Someone Else’s Problem Field is simply an illusionist magic trick that only exists as an artwork through the experience of its audience.”