AUSTRALIA: Art and science join with a Big Bang

Swinburne University in Melbourne called it "the Big Bang, galaxy formation" when Australian icon singer Kamahl and a Bollywood orchestra starred in an unlikely soap opera on Sunday - one that drew its inspiration from the night sky.

Void Love is an online soap opera about space, the result of an artistic partnership with Swinburne's centre for astrophysics and supercomputing.

Created by artists Willoh S Weiland and Nicky Forster during an Australian Network for Art and Technology residency with Swinburne, the 'online cosmological drama' was presented as a sound and video work featuring live performances in a Spiegeltent in the city centre.

Dr Christopher Fluke, a Swinburne astronomer and scientific partner on the project, said astronomy and art were highly complementary activities.

"What I gained from this collaborative venture was a better understanding of the similarities between the research processes of artists and scientists," Fluke said.

"We often ask the same types of questions but we interpret the outcomes in very different ways. Void Love was an ideal opportunity to reflect on some of the uncertainty surrounding our present understanding of our complex universe."

During the concert, the soap opera episodes were published to the Void Love website