Noisy Eyes

Daniel O’Toole Multimedia artist Naarm (Melbourne), Australia Mapping perception, I chart the shifting interplay of colour, light, sound, and space—using abstraction to translate the subtle, often intangible layers of sensory experience. This process is both personal and communicative: a way to better understand my own perceptual world while opening it for others to encounter in immersive, multi-sensory form. My practice spans painting, photography, video, sound, and installation. Building on the experimental approaches of the 1960s–70s Light and Space movement, I employ colour, light, and industrial materials to create objects and installations that respond to contemporary visual culture, producing optical effects that shift with the viewer’s perspective. These works invite reflection, active engagement, and heightened sensory awareness. The Refraction Painting series employs frosted acrylic screens, welded aluminium frames, and mirrored inlays to bend and scatter light, revealing nuanced micro-events—kinetic distortion, shifting shadows, and refraction— encouraging viewers to slow down and engage physically with the work. Through these effects, the work re-animates the static image, transforming perception into a material, immersive experience, and emphasising 'seeing' as active engagement rather than a passive reception. Just as the Refraction Painting series invites viewers to engage physically and attentively with light, Voices from the Void foregrounds sound, creating a participatory, immersive experience. The installation consists of nine resonant brass drums equipped with proximity sensors, allowing the drums to respond to visitors’ movement. This design encourages collective interaction while evoking meditative, ritualistic, and transcendent associations. Conceptually, the work sits within the historical lineage of mid-20th-century explorations of sound as a sculptural and spatial medium, echoing the site-specific installations of Max Neuhaus, John Cage’s experiments with indeterminacy, and Harry Bertoia’s interactive sound sculptures. Most recently, these strategies inform the Noisy Eyes series, where I explore my own experience of living with Visual Snow Syndrome (VSS) and share my way of seeing with the audience. Rather than reproducing perception literally, the works evoke the cognitive pressure and sensory overload of VSS through painterly means—resulting in immersive surfaces that are both chaotic and compositionally controlled. Like the sound work, they are paradoxical: simultaneously overwhelming and calm. Across painting, photography, video, and sound, my practice uses abstraction and cross-modal strategies informed by VSS and Synaesthetic perception to translate internal and external sensory experiences, offering insight into the subtlety, complexity, and variability of human perception.