dancing in the streets again.

today i spent the afternoon pretty much back at the start of my masters research: in a silent gig in public, dancing to music with a bunch of people in headphones. public/private/public.

the first time i did it was at ars electronica 2007 and it kickstarted my investigation into sound in public, the role/symbol/place of headphones in public and the ensuing 2 years' masters degree on all things related.

today was a silent parade for climate change, organised by 350 org and it was mad-fun.

what better a place to dance on the streets as part of political action but in berlin! berliners LOVE their electronic music and LOVE dancing (i should know, my club-induced sleeping patterns are getting ridiculous). it was awesome.



the vibe itself was fantastic - i dipped in and out of different shared experiences with it, giving it a diversity of engagement that really floated my boat, and made for an even more enjoyable and thought-provoking afternoon.

of course, each of these points of together/alone with the parade had slightly different aspects of public/private/public politics:


through the media
i had to join the parade halfway through. so with twitter and their hashtag, i connected with the parade halfway through. connecting as an outsider to the crowd using social media + political engagement, easy - media studies 101.

full engagement
then, i joined the party. i danced my arse of for a while in a group of others all dancing and enjoying themselves with a cracking soundtrack and lots of clapping, w00ts and smiles. we were all in this together, for a common cause and enjoyment. and we were surrounded by a bunch of people who weren't sharing, but engaged with curiosity - watching and wondering and maybe feeling a bit like outsiders. [more on the 'outsider' aspect of such a situation in a minute].

separated engagement
as the parade moved, i grabbed my bike, headphones still in range and rode on ahead, physically separate from the crowd, but still sonically and technologically engaged [wirelessly]. it was pretty special - i was riding in my own space, listening to music on my own, unable to see/hear others, but just knowing that they were there. i think this experience is exactly why the internet works.

and i had the fuckin' coolest extra little public/private/public moment -  i'm riding away from the crowd, passed the polizei van escorting us and one of the officers has the headphones on (so he can keep track of what's happening, i guess). and HE'S DANCING TOO!! i gave him a mega smile + bodacious wave and kept riding.
private citizen + public representative togetherness moment. swoon.





separated, but with one other
another lone bike-rider with headphones caught up with me and together we were riding, dancing, w00ting and throwing our hands up in the air, having our own little private/public/private dance party. in fact, i think that confused people outside the 'gig' even more - just two crazy girls dressed in black, on bikes, wearing headphones, dancing like maniacs with each other. but it was another one of those moments of sharing an experience with another person, as part of a wider crew, that was just priceless.

observer
i decided to do a part of my listening to the city project as part of the parade, so once the crowd stopped at the park on spandauer straße, i turned the radio headphones off and became an observer. my observation was largely based on what i could hear (which is hilarious when you're hearing what everyone else cannot), but it was still as an outside observer. there were lots of people also observing what was going on - some knowing a little bit about it, some not knowing and quiet alienated, others unknowing, but fascinated, or nonplussed. interesting levels of understanding and public engagement.

one thing i noticed is that having 'outsiders' is an important dynamic to an event like this. it generates curiosity, a point to engage, thought and 'difference'. the alienation is not didactic, or perhaps even intended, but i did notice that because people couldn't (or didn't have to) engage, they stood around and watched, thought and perhaps envied the process. i know that the advertising peeps crave that juicy experience a lot, but as an artist and activist, it was the first time i understood how it could be used for good.

full engagement again.
and, right at the end, i put the headphones back on and danced with the crowd for another little while. the level of dancing reduced by the time we got to the park, some just opting to lay back in the glorious autumn sunshine and listen, but the sense of common and einheit was still very strong, without a harsh word, or forced action in earshot. brilliant.

blatant self-promotion #240

this one's especially to all the melbourne peeps:


tomorrow (Sunday), RMIT brunswick campus will open its grounds, hallways, foyers, ceilings and overlooked spaces for Artland at RMIT. And i have a little work in it, so please pop along and have a look. Especially because wanda and jodie from RMIT union arts have done such a great job of scoping the site and installing it for me whilst i've been here in berlin. angels.

from the official blurb:


"Part of Moreland City Council’s MoreArt public art show, Artland at RMIT is a unique exhibition open to all RMIT students to enter. Through sculpture, installation, temporary or ephemeral artworks – artists are invited to use the space available to create works around the theme ‘Artists imagining your world’."

oh, and all exhibitors will be eligible for the $1,000 RMIT union arts award, judged and presented by the MoreArt judging panel. so, you know. anyone on the judging panel, i could do with $1,000. :D


deets:
10-24 October 2010
RMIT Brunswick Campus
Dawson St, Brunswick.
Victoria, Australia


opening: Sunday 10 October 
3.30 - 5.30pm, 
RMIT Brunswick Campus.



The exhibition opening will be preceded by 3 guided tours of the exhibition/festival/shindig:

12.30 pm Bicycle Tour. Meet at Gowrie Train Station
1.00 pm Train and Walking Tour. Meet at Coburg Train Station
1.20 pm Bicycle Tour. Meet at Coburg Train Station


http://launch.rmit.edu.au/artland.html 

j'adore krink

talk about seeing red... i love this bit of neo-actionism.


thanks to gemma jones, via krink, via glitsch.

sound in the public realm

love attack!!

as seen in brighton, UK. via wooster. [click to enlarge]

the sound of the public on sound

yesterday was the amazing SLAM (Save LIve Australian Music) rally in Melbourne.

there has been quite a bit of press and lots of pics about it already, but of course i need to put my 2c worth in. [which, with rounding is fuck-all really]. it has thrown up a wealth of things for me to think/write about, so bear with me.


background whinge


photography: sarah barber

if you're new to the scene, or slow on the uptake, there's a bit of a background whinge here. basically, the state govt have been trying to curb violence in the CBD clubs through the liquor licensing system after a death outside a club one night by a guy who had drunk a whole bottle of wild turkey. which he had bought as a takeaway from the club. a shit event, but hardly the right brush to tar everyone with.

most venues that serve liquor, that have amplified music (ie clubs, pubs. and maybe shopping centres and airport lounges) are deemed 'high risk' and now require a higher licence fee, two security guards for any 'event' and the stigma of 'high risk'.

and, as mentioned yesterday, this is all fine and dandy for a decent number of venues in melbourne, it is crippling for those in the country towns, which only have one venue. and, as also mentioned yesterday, these are the places that employ a music industry: musicians, sound engineers, music technicians, events managers. these laws are crippling the distribution networks for these businesses.

now, when the supply chain for the banking industry went pear-shaped last year, the bankers used the media outlets to have their whinge. yesterday, musicians and music-lovers took to the streets and made it a very public affair, reflecting the very public nature of the issue.


the rally



thousands of us made our way from the state library, the site of knowledge, cultural heritage and civic research, to the steps of parliament: the site of democracy, public governance and civic responsibility. it was a fitting track and the way was packed with people and some shit-hot placards.

dell has some great pics, including my favourite one: psychedelic freaks vote too.

i wanted to make a placard saying 'how am i supposed to procreate if all the music venues close?' but i never got around to it.
and of course the best one was 'it's a long way from the top if you bury rock'n'roll'. naturally it's not just about rock'n'roll - one of the speakers told a great yarn about the fabulous reclamation night out with her greek friends, where they went to a greek taverna, then went on to dance to gypsy, australian folk and latin music - all on the one night. ace.

i also got thinking about the actual sounds of the protest. as we walked, you would hear the faint rumble of a cheer and you would cheer - it was the sonic version of a mexican wave at the cricket. a beautiful thing.

and then the crowd clapped. in time, to a harps player. what group of people can clap in time without live music? ever been to the football? heh.

and of course the way the air in melbourne changed with the different music styles. the crowd became equally gooey and restless when wilbur wilde and his jazz crew soothed us into the late afternoon.

it was amazing to hear sound in the city on such a grand scale with an experience usually reserved for a small scale. and to have music quieten a crowd that is usually loud and boisterous and chaotic. it was a special moment and i do wish that i had documented it in a more profound way.

at our most public

"Indeed, when we dress up, when we're on display and at our most public, these are the times when our costumes get the most pretendy - we get married dressed as princesses and officers - then go back to our everyday lives dressed as squaddies, rockstars or resting athletes."

a beautiful quote by russell davies in his fabulous post about pretend, costume, fashion and a whole range of ideas around playing roles.

i've been cycling around ideas of fashion, headphone culture and their roles in public, so this is perfectly timed, as usual

85 decibels, baby!

the anode festival opened in melbourne on friday night and i remembered that i should really tell you all about a work i have in it.

it's the third in a series of city listening works and this one, 85 decibels, baby!, is a durational work - a long one. i'll be attending to the sounds of city - listening to as much of that cacophony as possible - for 8 hours straight.

8 hours. a traditional working timeframe and the one deemed 'safe' to listen to 85 decibels.
85 decibels is the apparent sound level of city traffic. from inside a car.
i'll be out in the open, with headphones on as that muffler.
i'll be subverting that desire to make the unwanted, the 'noise' subliminal.

the performance will be on saturday 14th november, 2009: 1- 9pm. on the corner of bourke and elizabeth sts in melbourne CBD. feel free to pop down and say hello.
listen with me if you want to.

i'm hoping to post an image each hour and, if we can find a way, hopefully webcasting it somehow. although that's still to be worked out exactly. i will, however, be making notes and images in a series of books and i'll post those images afterwards.

for more info about the rest of the program, check out the anode site.

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 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 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 :)

this is not sound

See what that says: Catch me at This Is Not Art. And more specifically, Electrofringe. Daniel and Somaya, the awesome peeps at Electrofringe kindly offered me a place in their program, so I’m taking the Cone of Silence to TINA.

Over the last 3 days I’ve been patterning, cutting, sewing, riveting, lining and packaging to reconfigure the Cone of Silence from RMIT’s first site, to create the wearable, mobile version. A quiet costume, kinda.

I’m super excited about going – especially after the ace, but stupidly short time I had there 3 years ago. I’m looking forward to catching at least a couple of good shows and learning stuff.

I’ll be wandering the streets of Newcastle, soundproofing the city – bringing some silence back into the place – especially amongst the glitch of a festival focused on making a helluva lot of noise.




The Cone of Silence is also available to hire for 30 minute sessions from the Festival Hub/Club. So you can have a bit of quiet time in the overwhelming goodness of the festival.

If you’re at TINA, please come and say hey if you see me about. I’ll be there from Thursday - Sunday and will also be giving a more formal artist talk at the Round Theatrette on Saturday afternoon (3rd October), at 2pm. If you’re one of the 3 people there, feel free to ask awkward questions – I’m always up for a challenge. Heh.

And if you’re not at TINA, well, you should be seeing some of the Melbourne Fringe shows – some of which I’ll post about shortly – there are a few little gems about, that’s for sure.

*twitter hashtag: #electrofringe

site-writing

i'm a whole week behind on posting about this, but it's always better late than never, right?*



last friday, as part of the architecture + philosophy series, design research institute and the urban interior research group from RMIT, jane rendell - writer, architectural designer, art critic and historian from the bartlett (ucl) in london- gave a presentation: to and fro: site writing.

she spoke about the role of writing in terms of art/architecture, the role of critique, the influence of ego and the id on critical architecture and the inevitable interstitial space between public and private.

i left the lecture almost bursting with ideas. in fact, i almost left myself a voicemail message as a reminder of all the cool stuff i had heard. i kind of wish i did because, 7 days later, all i can remember is the feeling and a faint connection to the notes i took.

she does have a new book coming out soon - site-writing, in which the process of critique and writing has been developed into a more formal process-based work, in which the various forms of language about site and experience are interspersed, a collage of sorts, even.

and as interesting as that is, a point of discussion which we had included the importance of purely functional writing and/or critique. where the traditional roles of object and outcome remain separated and the writer takes on the role of designer - responding to a brief: to articulate the nuance and visual code of an artist/architect/performer's work

there were a couple of key points, which i thought were particularly interesting.

1. immersive critique - whereby the writer responds to the work, not as a detached observer, or dissociated object, but from within the space. it reminded me about andrea fraser's 'little frank and his carp' - the video work she did where she responded to the guggenheim by literally following the directives of the audio guide - rubbing herself on the smooth walls, etc.

2. repression presents itself through repetition. i thought this was a particularly interesting concept. coming from a 'history never repeats' aspect, but i guess from an aesthetic position, it's something i'd be interested in researching some more.

3. the relationship of feminist theory and psychoanalysis to architecture. luce irigray is prime example, but i love being part of a discussion where the concept of design acknowledges gender politics and sexual identity. goodness abound.


i'm hoping that her presentation/paper will be uploaded to the arch+phil site soon, because i need a refresher course, but in the mean time, here is link to her presentation for one day sculpture in nz.

and some pics of my notes. you know, writing as image and back again [click to enlarge].














*except having your period. then it's always better never.

the cone of silence: first site.

as you all know, this year has been a crazy busy year for me. i think the official twitter hashtag for my 2009 is #norestforthewicked.

so, in 2 weeks' time i have an installation/intervention/something-or-other at First Site gallery in Swanston St, Melbourne. It's one of the RMIT galleries, underneath Storey Hall.



it's a space that is part of my research into headphones and acoustic privacy; a site-specific work that recreates the actions we take when we put our headphones on - we create a little niche for ourselves to be unheard. a choice over our sonic environment.



inspired, of course, by maxwell smart and the cone of silence from the get smart tv series*, it is a crawl space that has been set into the stairway to heaven at the back of the gallery (for those who know the space).


opening on tuesday 15th september at 5:30pm, the exhibition runs until the 26th, in conjunction with the sculpture exhibition: scale of mark.



*of course there are more serious influences like bachelard, adorno, debord and bull, but there'll be an essay available at the gallery for all you freaks who are interested in cultural theory/aesthetics - this blog is for the lowest common denominator, don't you know.

listening to the city, part II.

following on from the not-listening project i posted about last week, saturday saw the extended remix of the listening to the city work that i've been undertaking. it's a process work on the act of listening and the role of headphones in urban life, where sound is a public environment.

in the first part, i was a participant. this time, i mostly delegated. i had 9 other fabulous listeners with me to record and absorb the soundscape of the city, making freeform notes along the way.

4 curators
4 artists (1 of whom is also an artist)
a DJ
a stylish go-getter
a writer of sorts
and a slightly extravagant interpreter/member of the polis

each person listened for 1 hour, most in the same spot. each had over-ear headphones as a prop - metaphorically connected to a social code and literally plugged into parts of the city: stairs, handrails, garden beds, public sculptures, bike rails, bus stops, stone columns.

plus, we had the occasional person wondering what we were plugged into, what was going on. as ben said, he could hear 'the sound of people's necks turning to stare and wonder'.

i haven't had a lot of time to distill the experience yet, but in the brief poring over some of the notebooks, it's interesting to see the same sound events happening and the different ways in which people noted it, experienced it, recorded it. some sounds were noticed, others were not.

most of us went to my local, brother, for a much-need coffee and sweet treat afterwards. it was there that a fantastic round-table discussion happened about the nature of listening in public, the effect of the headphones - both aesthetically and accoustically, and the experience of public sound emersion. i recorded a chunk of it with my dodgy phone voice recorder and am hoping that it captured enough of the dialogue to be useful.

interestingly, everyone's experience confirmed and related to the research/theory i've been poring over, and extended the nature of the previous projects. although it wasn't quite as big as i imagined it to be, it was still a success, in terms of what i'm interested in engaging with.

thanks to anthea, ben, dunja, eddy, jaymie, kim, kira, nella, simon and uncle george from greece.

found(ed) object(ion)

i found these posters, plastered up on bus stops in frankston.

i found them so despicable that i tore them down. thankfully, no one seemed to want to stop me doing that.

i found the whole experience completely weird. it's not like frankston isn't without its fair share of violence and rape. not to mention its filthy drug habit and general trashiness. it's just that it's mostly white there.*

i found the whole dialectic aspect of it kind of strange too - some racist wanker puts up these posters in prominent places, trying to sway a particular section of the public, and then i come along and tear it down - my action conveying a specific retort. and that , in a free country as ours purports to be, both actions are as 'valid' as each other. as much as i wanted to vomit all over the creator of said racist propaganda, i value the freedom of a politic which supports this kind of exchange - where he (and i'm being gross in my gender generalisation here) puts up shit i don't agree with and i get to take it down. equal and opposite reaction again.

i found it quite important to be having a 'remote' clash of values, in the public realm. on equal footing almost. rather than it being facilitated through the all-powerful broadcast media, or the insidiousness of behind-closed-doors-deals-and-policy that happens at either end of the big power structures. it was almost mano e mano. one citizen against another in hand-to-hand combat.

i found out what what frankston looked like according to its sound a while back. it might be interesting to see what dandenong sounds like. and compare the two - see what frankston would sound like if it ended up like dandenong.








*disclaimer: for those not from melbourne, frankston is a southern outer-suburb which has had a bad name for years. it's pretty low on the socio-economic scale and has a disproportionate amount of young pregnancy, amphetamine abuse and unemployment. superseded only by toorak (i jest, just). and my generalisation about frankston is just that. of course there are amazing people in frankston, doing some fantastic things. and plenty of ordinary people doing lovely ordinary things. naturally, this post isn't really about them.

calling all listeners

all 5 of my regular readers will probably remember me talking about that listening project eddy and i did last month? where we 'plugged in' to the city and listened to the public soundtrack with our headphones on.

well, in the spirit of all things bold and beautiful, i'm upscaling the project for a performance next month and i'm looking for helpers.

i need people to listen with me. in public.

there will be 20 - 30 of us, all with headphones, randomly plugged into aspects of the city and its structure/infrastructure, all paying attention, noting the sounds of the city. radiating from the key intersection of elizabeth and bourke sts, but still in a relatively tight formation, the work will draw attention to the act of listening, the object of headphones in public and the sound of metropolitan melbourne.

unlike last time, you don't have to dance. all you have to do is listen and be willing to do that for 30 minutes, in a group.

if you're interested in participating, drop me a line in the comments section, DM me on twitter, or email me lauren @ sheseesred.com.

if you're one of my current angels, and i haven't got back to you yet, never fear - the group email is nigh.






and here are some related links, just in case i haven't made myself clear enough.

my mini-DVR (pdf)
flickr pics
my blog post
eddy's blog post
michael bull's essay in google books

the fourth plinth: one and other.

personally, i was rooting for tracey's work. i wanted to see meerkats in trafalgar square.

and, to be honest, thanks to the oversaturation of gormleyness a few years back, i was feeling a little lacklustre about one and other. until i started hearing about it online and i saw the live streaming.

yes, i'm talking about the fourth plinth commission - the public art work that is situation situated on the spare plinth in trafalgar square. thomas schütte's hotel for the birds has come down and has been replaced by the controversial winner of the public competition. beating tracey emin and yinka shonibare to the post. heh.

but this, kids, is an ace use of technology and art in the public space. yes, the 'ordinary englishmen' aspect of it can be a little ho-hum, but getting to know the 'plinthers' is pretty cool, and the live streaming is almost as good as nils september and his ikea durational performance last year.




i could go on about other shit aspects to it, and pick apart the 'everyone is an artist' beuysian references, but i can't be arse at the moment. what i like most about it at the moment is the sheer car crash television aspects of it. i am addicted to it. in terms of durational/ritual/torture work, it's kickin' arse over the tour de france and master chef anyday!

public space has a soundtrack now

apologies for the lack of posts on this blog of late. i've had a big project hangin' over my head, causing me a whole swag of stress. and as much as i love procrastinating in times of stress, i really haven't been able to justify blogging :)


as i keep alluding to, my masters research this year is focusing on sound in the public space, especially within increased urbanity. i'm specifically investigating the divide between public and private sound - the choice over the kind of 'noise' you hear, through the groovy development of headphones, and what it is in public that we don't hear when we choose to wear them.

the research i've done so far has involved a couple of smaller projects which are starting to flesh out the crux of what i'm looking at. and the main thing i've learned is that, actually, the crux is a whole lot further away than a final year's project. which means two things: that i'm going to be presenting more of a 'study' rather than a final 'masterpiece' and, that both mayhem and lucazoid's evil suggestions that i do a PhD is looking scarily feasible.


mobile privacy units




these are headphone-based objects that play on the social codes and language surrounding the wearing of headphones and their role in creating acoustic privacy in public space.

Headsets have been augmented with art materials also associated with soundproofing/creating quiet: cardboard, felt, cotton wool (in your ears, mate) and take on the oversized form of DJ heasets. And a range of text has been added to state explicitly the kind of language and messages that are often and/or unsconsciously conveyed through the wearing of headphones in public whilst listening to portable music..

Just the image of headphones over ones ears can be enough of a ‘do not disturb’ sign.

These MPUs shout this need for acoustic privacy:‘sssh!’; ‘private’ ; ‘!sssh’ (in arabic); ‘quiet time’; ‘mon moment tranquille’ (‘my quiet moment’ fr. trans); ‘please leave me alone’.


the measure of the public soundtrack



Psychoacoustics, or the perception of sound, has links with psychogeography as one way to map, or
experience the city and die Öffentlichkeit (the public sphere). This project measured public/ambient and
private sound taken into the public space - primarily music through headphones and externalises this
liminal space through drawing.

Images were made by occupying a selection of public spaces and mapping the ambient sound using a variety of capture technology. The primary device was the online Voice Drawing Tool by ze frank, which responds to sound through basic form from a laptop in-built mic: low volume curves counterclockwise, medium volume is straight, high volume curves clockwise. HD Video, Microsoft Word and still images were also used to record sound environment.

The iphone/ipod touch application, Wide Noise was intended to be used, but didn’t function without an external mic on the ipod touch.

This has become a comparitive study of place through its sonic output and the images represent the nature - aural and otherwise - of these places in visual form. The drawings also mapped the conceptual action of being in the public space, listening and measuring sound through drawing and technology.


listening and dancing to the city



This project aims to draw attention to all of sound in the public space, the action of listening and headphones-as-device through the process and/or performance of actively listening to sites and their rhythms in the CBD.

By performing the acts of listening and then dancing to places in the city, over a reasonably prolonged period of time (well, an hour), the artists involved will become attuned to the city and its soundtrack. Passers-by will also notice the sustained process
of engaging with the sound of the city and question their own engagement or response to sound, listening, dance and the ‘soundtrack’ of the urban environment, both public and private.

This project also uses the artists’ occupation of space as a vital basis from which to make observations and to elicit change within the public realm. It places itself within the ‘political’, people-focused, process-based aspect of arts practice.


audio guide (test project)

using the mobile privacy units, i made an 'audio guide' for the underground art space at collingwood housing estate, during their Living Art project. the work, which caricatures gallery audio headsets, encourages the viewer to note what they see in the gallery, and what they hear. and when i say 'note', i mean it - the work comes with little cards with a list of 5 things they've seen and 5 they've heard.

whilst it wasn't an absolute hit in this setting, i think i'm going to push it a little and see where it goes, in terms of gallery settings - maybe even public gallery settings.


the next lot of projects are slated to include:

emergency dance zone: public permission to rock out. for when you've got a killer track in your headphones and you've just gotta dance. kind of like a porta-loo for dancing. changes afoot, dates and locations TBC.

the listening to the city XL. i think i'm going to work this one up into a larger scale - 20 or so artists in a smallish city block.

the cone of silence - a 'silent' space in a public gallery. in september/october in melbourne.

i'd also love to do a workplace-based work, plugging into the whole culture of open-plan offices using headphones as privacy devices. but we'll have to see.




these images and some of the text are from my first publication for uni - a durable visual record - which was made in the vein of a 7" rekkid. with a DVD of 'bonus material', liner notes and a booklet. i've uploaded the main part of it as a PDF here. and as a presentation here. if you feel like it.

sound as memorial

i know that there will be 4,398,009 blogs about michael jackson posted today, and although i'm not one of the massive fans, it's a pretty massive thing. so forgive me.

however, what i did notice was the emergence of a new form of memorial. what has gone from bronze, to landscape architecture and now to the ipod. every store, cafe, public place with a PA system had michael jackson songs playing. my boss - a massive fan - had his entire collection on (including the random b-sides from dangerous, or something).

and across the city, homage was being paid in this way. a real-time memorial in sound to a man who meant something to people.

when kurt cobain died, radio did specials on him, there was a rage piece and i distinctly remember standing in the local video store listening to helen razer's spoken work eulogy to him. but those sound pieces were in fits and starts - not a city-wide sensation.

with the spread of the ipod (and other portable music devices), paying tribute through sound has now become a public connection point between people, and a way to address a collective grief.

bronze on pedestal, be gone!

sound on demand

the other night i went to the MSO performance, to the new world. it was a freebie through the test-drive the arts program (ace program, by the way).

and whilst i was being swept away by dvorák, i was thinking about the experience of music and composed sound. that all-encompasing, performative artistic expression which is seen 'out' - in public. i don't know a lot about the history of music, but i can imagine that prior to, say the 17th Century, music was not an altogether "accessible" experience. at least not in a dedicated space. you would probably hear chamber music during the dances and (depending on your station in life) perhaps an orchestra once every 6 months, or a year. maybe not even as much as that.



fast track 400 years (not all that long really, in the history of 'civilisation') and now, we're all walking around with own private soundtracks all the time. even if we're not rockin' the latest 32G iPod touch, we've got car stereos, walkmans, mp3 players, turntables, ghetto blasters, transistor radios, etc. all 'dedicated spaces' for hearing an all-encompassing sound. my friend from apple calls it 'on-demand'.


perhaps it is just me, with a slightly warped focus on sound in public at the moment, but i think this is amazing.
given that i'm now listening to a nick cave and the bad seeds slam their way through 'i'm on fire' at about 8, it's pretty incredible to imagine that my 17th century compatriot might only ever listen to music that loud once a year. no wonder symphonies had such a profound effect on people. and that the cultural significance of a song lasted so long (see faris' interesting article on latency with regards to that)



i'm about to start some research on threshold shifts, but given what we hear now, given that we carry 100 db around in our pockets on a daily basis, plus we have to deal with cars, HVAC systems, trains, buses and much larger populations, it's pretty astounding how quickly we have adapted to that level of sound (or noise, depending on which side of the fence you sit on).

unsurprising really, that our 'dedicated spaces' for listening to (electronically) amplified music have become an architectural/design category in their own rights: up there with the MRC, the sydney opera house and carnegie hall.

expect more in this in the future...


images: turntable by josh sandler
mso by tengtan