Armagan Ballantyne (left) and Jon Baxter with the giant eye installation at Motat as part of the new exhibition. Photo / Supplied
An Auckland exhibition combining art and cutting-edge innovation has proven an eye-opening exercise for two Kiwi film-makers.
Armagan Ballantyne and Jon Baxter have teamed up with ODocs Eye Care - an award-winning Kiwi company that's created a world-first smartphone app - for a new feature at the Idea Collective, an
ongoing exhibition at the Museum of Transport and Technology (Motat).
While the pair have enjoyed richly creative careers - Ballantyne's 2009 film The Strength of Water was shown at festivals around the world and Baxter has created videos for Wellington Museum and Auckland Art Gallery - working with leading innovators had been a refreshing first.
Bringing together artists with homegrown tech companies has been the central theme of the Idea Collective and one project leader Luke Diggins acknowledged was a complete departure from Motat's usual offering.
Ballantyne said it was a "really neat brief" to design something that reflected the work of oDocs, whose app helped diagnose people who may have sight-threatening illnesses, performing a similar function to that done with $50,000 of eye-examination equipment. The open-source product has now been downloaded by thousands of people around the world.
