Eight diorite cores randomly resonated throughout the installation by the use of transducers vibrating the rocks, each to its own resonant frequency. 'Listen to the sound of a million years singing'.

photo: John Baird

'Ceci n'est pas une pipe by Sherre DeLys and Joan Grounds...is a wonderful metamorphosis of René Magritte's not-pipe into Leonara Carrington's hearing trumpet, mapped onto sound and mythology. If it wasn't for Grounds' objects, you might think it was similar to those attempts to make zoos more lifelike -- humane is it? -- by adding environmental sounds. But the birds you hear in this cultured nature are at least twice cultured: not only are they recorded and not-live, they are all imitations made by humans (does this preclude humans imitating birds mimicking other birds?). In other words, these not-birds have larynxes not syrinxes. Even the virtuoso gum leaf player from Malaysia imitating a turtle dove has simply found a prosthetic larynx, much like Leonardo's laryngeal flute, among the birds in the trees. [...in the work...] the relations of seduction and destruction, the losses pertaining to simulation and the species connectedness practiced through mimicry, among natures and cultures and territories...become vertiginously provocative.'

-- Douglas Kahn, in Real Time 8, August - September 1995, p. 13.

photo (studio): Joan Grounds

Nigel Helyer

Oracle Sound in Space, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1995

Oracle inhabits the nexus between the body and architectural space by proposing the voice as the carrier of both prophesy and of ideological imperative. In this fusion of corpus and polis the sound field simultaneously operates as actuality, as virtuality and as metaphor -- Architecture unfrozen!

photo: Heidrun Löhr

Joyce Hinterding

The Oscillators (detail) Sound in Space, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1995

Comprised of conventional art materials -- pencil (graphite), paper, and silver leaf -- these drawings are functioning interpretations of the circuit diagram of the electronic device: the phase shift oscillator. Electricity generated by the solar panel is fed directly into the drawing. Each component of the drawing, the pencil marks, silver and paper are used to conduct, impede and collect electricity. The need for regular electronic componentry has been reduced to one transistor and a small piezo speaker on each drawing. The sound produced by this circuit is generated by controlled electrical feedback, and the frequency and sound quality are determined by the size and unique characteristics of the drawn components.

photo: Ian Hobbs

Herb Jercher

Stealth Cycle (performance) 'Earwitness', Experimenta '94*, The Gasworks, Melbourne, 1994

Matching sensory mechanisms allow artificial and natural rhythms of vibration to evolve super-sense-sound-sharing deception strategies.

Constructing a performance with sound sculptures is akin to stealth dancing with acoustic instruments that choreograph one's sonic physique. The ear becomes the primary sensory perceptive mechanism for movement, whilst the eye supports perceptions of time. It is an exercise of releasing energy in silence whilst coping with survival rituals and sound deceptions. Aural fascinations occur during balance phases in transition. The reality of consciousness dominates, terminating an otherwise effortless song of silent authorship. Yet, to believe that the 'fauna caller' would ever have been able to endure without performing, forsakes the quarry's call, inverts the action and renders the participants to a vicarious curfew.

-- Herb Jercher, Experimenta '⁹⁴ catalogue, p. 45.

photo: Ross Bird

* Experimenta is a biennial survey of Australian and international experimental film, video, electronic, and sound art presented by the Modern Image Makers Association.

Derek Kreckler

How to Discipline a Tree/boo! 'Earwitness', Experimenta '94, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 1994

Iain Mott concept and composition, Marc Raszweski design and sculpture, Tim Barrass animation

Squeezebox (sound sculpture) 'Earwitness', Experimenta '94, ether ohnetitel, Melbourne, 1994

Squeezebox is a public interactive artwork. Participants push down on pneumatic hands to alter the timbre and spatial location of sound above the sculpture, in addition to shaping a centrally located graphic image. Sound and image are presented as an integrated plastic object, a form to be squeezed and moulded by participants.

photo: Ross Bird

Ion Pearce

mobile-without-mobility Sound in Space, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1995

photo: Heidrun Löhr

Jodi Rose

Song to Dissolve the World Sound in Space audiothéque (selection of tape-based sound art), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1995

An investigation of the sonic properties of the city, as the decoding of an alternative language; one other than the purely pragmatic and visual experience of architecture. The city has become our temple; electronic networks our religion; the inaudible vibrations of the bridge cables are the voice of the divine. The word of the universe soaks through my cochlea into the nerve centres. I am wired to god.

photo: Jodi Rose

Anna Sabiel

Internalised Cities is a performance piece incorporating a dynamic installation. Within this installation, time based media such as video, and amplification techniques are utilised to explore the concept of the internalised city: of physical memory, gesture and the human condition. The project is a collaboration between performance/sound artists Anna Sabiel and installation/multimedia artist Sarah Waterson. Sound engineer/acoustician Shane Fahey is also involved in developing amplification techniques and measuring appropriate resonances of the installation.

photo: Heidrun Löhr

Julaine Stephenson

Dust The Performance Space, Sydney, 1995

Dust toys with the concepts surrounding mainstream sound producers' preoccupation with 'clean sound' juxtaposed with the redundancy of domestic analogue technology. The cracks in the gallery floorboards become the 'groove' of the record, played by a sharpened fork prong stylus and gramophone soundbox, acoustically amplifying the dust in the 'grooves'. A reverse dust bug is dusting, spreading vacuum cleaner dirt over the record/floor.

photo: Julaine Stephenson

Deborah Vaughan

Dora's Feet Sound in Space, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1995

'Psychoanalysis is said to be "speaking on the field of the other" which linked in my mind to magnetic fields and the polarities of self and other. Clearing my throat? Spit disturbing the centredness that makes for things to exist.'