Electro-luminescent light cable. 49 metal picket posts. 45ft x 75ft.

1: a weight that balances another 
2: a force or influence that offsets an opposing force

Counterbalance (2007) was made for the inaugural international RMIT Creative Media Residency, Prophet was commissioned to work at the 1850s Swiss House in a small town in regional Victoria, Australia. The house and its grounds reflect the hardship and rural struggle that is the companion of climate change, globalisation and drought.

​The Swiss House is located on the floodplains of Avoca. Over the last 100 years the house and grounds have been flooded on a number of occasions. Using photographs from the Avoca Historical Society, and anecdotes from local residents and previous occupants of the house, Prophet determined three flood levels. These formed the basis of a new light-based installation in the form of a grid of lines of light.

The piece was designed to be seen by night from the road (and specifically from passing pick-up trucks that use the flood-plain as a shortcut). Counterbalance was a kind of 3D wire frame graph rendered in real life, conjuring the enormous bodies of water that have previously drowned the house.