the cone of silence: electrofringe

As you may have been aware, The Cone of Silence was invited to be part of the Electrofringe Festival the weekend before last in Newcastle, as a direct challenge to the extensive program of noise production and sound art. Somaya and Daniel - directors of the Festival were interested in the antithetical nature of this (non) sound piece as a vital aspect of any discourse about sound, art and public space. And from a sound-geek person's point of view, i was more than interested in attending :D

‘The Cone’ as it became affectionately known as, made regular appearances throughout the city of Newcastle, ‘soundproofing’ it, or at least bringing back some silence to parts of public life:

- Civic Park and the Fountain
- Newcastle Library
- Darby Street (the café/counterculture ‘precinct’ of Newcastle)
- Train between Civic Station and Newcastle Station
- The TINA ‘Zine Fair
- Regular trips down the main thoroughfare – King St, between the Festival club on the hill and Octopod, near Civic Park.

In the evenings, ‘The Cone’ rested at the Festival Club, allowing people to interact with it as a static object or climb in it during gigs. And maybe to give me a bit of a rest. It weighs 10kgs you know...











There was a range of interactions with the Cone of Silence as a feature of public life during the Festival:
- A lot of wry smiles of appreciation from passersby and ‘zine fair visitors
- Rapping on the outside from a group of drunk bogans on the Friday night and the obligatory intense questioning and quasi-harassment
- Intrigue from the Police (but ultimate nonchalance – due to the festival being on)
- No engagement whatsoever on the train (which was interesting in and of itself)
- Trying the piece on by a few brave peeps.
- Being asked if the piece was an ATM (based on a TV Commercial?)
- A loud and cheery “Hi Cone of Silence!!” yelled from a car on Darby St, by a local who had been given flyers two days previously. I was almost a local then.
- And inntense conversation about the codes of silence in Fijian spiritual practice with a woman who had just returned from a silent retreat there. She tried the piece on and wanted lots of photos.

and generally a good feeling about the work.

In terms of art in the public space, the level of interaction with art - certainly facilitated by the parameters of a well-know festival – were encouraging and enlightening.

Each of these reactions, whether it was to the object itself, to the nostalgic Get Smart reference, to the idea of having some ‘space’, or to the intrusion of mobile architecture certainly echoed the sentiments many have with the much-smaller and less-conspicuous versions of acoustic private space: headphones - which is what i was kinda hoping for.

There's more to say about my experience at Electrofringe, but this is just a little taste of the actual work.








Obvious big thanks goes to Somaya and Daniel for their awesome support, courage, organisation and openness as festival directors.

Extra big thanks to Max Milne and Victoria Bennett for their added awesome photo stylee skills.

Electrofringe/TINA : Day 3. Saturday

Today was raining, which put a bit of a dampner on the festival, but I managed to see more stuff than previous days, despite an early performance and a presentation of my own.

Pics are to come, but I managed to catch a bit of a performance and Q&A with Rosy Parlane, a field recording artist from NZ; a snippet of a performance/workshop by Bum Creek – who were positively hilarious and who I’m going to make an effort to see tonight and definitely when I’m back in Melbourne.

I also caught up with the Suffragette City gals, a bit of John Kilduff and the Let’s Paint TV crew and saw some of a presentation and performance by Jim Cuomo, electronic jazz musician, computer games soundtrack developer, avant garde - who is sharing our apartment too.

As you can probably tell, a festival like this is all ‘part-of, in parts and just caught some’. Too much on, not enough time. But in a good way, y’hear? In fact, there were many correlations between my time here and that in Linz at ars electronica, which I think is pretty rad – given that I’m in a small town on the east coast of Australia.

There’s still a lot to process and I’ll write some more about my performances another day, as I will about the invaluable contribution that participating in the festival has made to my own artistic development.

Electrofringe/TINA : Day 2. Friday

day 2 was the first 'real' day for me. from a performer/artist point of view. i got amongst it. but i still got to check out a few things happening at the festival.



I spent a large chunk of the day performing, or catching up on little tasks. I popped in to check out the China Club Arts Hub – a fluid series of spaces, with open, workshops areas, a great kitchen that serves crepes (including their specialty – the date crepe, with apple). I went to see Matt Rochford’s alarm clock extravaganza – a series of clock radio alarms, mostly set to the same time (give or take the random one or two), which were set to explode at midday on Saturday.



I did get to see an amazing performance – my personal highlight of the festival thus far: Ensemble Offspring, Pimmon and a performance of the Stockhausen piece: Kontakte. Pimmon is an electronic artist and academic who produced some beautiful soundscapes while offspring ensemble make improvised syncopated works. their collaboration was a perfect mixture between the two methods – a great reverb/electro distortion and collage.

The work of Karlheinz Stockhausen is a recent discovery for me, but what a discovery! And this performance was a combination of acoustic instruments, performed by Bernadette Balkus and Claire Edwardes and electronic parts by the fantastic sound engineer, Bob Scott.

As well as a great performance, the amazing aspect was the fact that the two principal performers on stage were both women. Stockhausen is the kinda guy that all the boys love and it’s not often that you see the ladies up there. Well, I was pretty excited anyway.

I did have plans to see Suzanne Grae and the Katies - great band from Melbourne that i keep on missing, but the line-up was mental and they finished before i could get there. sad face.

Electrofringe/TINA : Day 1. Thursday

I arrived in newcastle at about 11am and had Mia, our friendly runner, pick me up from Newcastle station. It was pretty warm and I was carrying my luggage, equipment and an artwork. Hard work, so it was great to get a lift.
I went straight to the Octopod and worked on assembling the cone – did that for a few hours until I needed some food, then decided to actually see some stuff, rehydrate.


there's a lot of great stuff about - lots of street-based sticker stuff, random performances and a bemused kind of vibe.

I met Mika Meskanen - a Berlin-based Finnish artist, who has assembled a Temp Sauna: a temporary sauna (see what he did there) in Civic Park. – right in the centre of Newcastle. It’s fabulous – constructed from tent-structure, thermo wraps, a wood oven with granite stones.



Mason’s festival club launch was great fun – I just scooted around the outside, checkin’ stuff out. I saw Dan Mackinlay’s fantastic performance, chatted with some of the peeps, handed out flyers, etc.




Laughed at the Giraffe Carafe, by Belle Brooks: Typing ‘giraffe sex’ into google yields ungodly results - A pixelated sculpture of two giraffes fucking (see above). Ooh, naughty. Taboo aside, the work is also really well-presented – in a long, narrow room, with a locked, reinforced glass door and dramatic spot lighting. It screams ‘enclosure’.

electrofringe day 2

hi peeps!

well, i've been in newcastle, at TINA/Electrofringe since thursday morning and i promise that i would have posted something in depth about it if i could. not that there isn't enough material - there's plenty of that. but it's the time. the time!

here's a gllimpse of how full it's been: what's in my bag.



i've just got back from an amazing performance of stockhausen's kontakte andi have about 5 minutes to finish eating, before heading off to see suzanne grae and the katies perform. but i promise, really promise, that i'll write up a post about the first couple of days when i get home.

and if you're at TINA this weekend, don't forget i have a presentation to give on saturday afternoon, 2pm at the round theatrette. pop in and say hi. at least on your way to the other 55 awesome things on :)