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origins/site.
Site-specific, sites of mourning, sacred sites, non-sites, colonial, contested, original, communal, private, interior, condemned, celebrated, and off-limits. Audio here explores physical space as well as mental, historical, and speculative sites. A theme spanning an impressive array of topics and ideas: aboriginal land and water rights, museum artifact repatriation, the quest for sourcing silence, sovereign art practices, speculative futures, drum voices, migrating eels and, site-specific environmental listening nodes. Origins/site can be heard on currents and waves on Tuesdays.
download the Tuesday - origins/site schedule
Selected currents and waves audio falling into the theme of origins:
Pollinators and Lifegivers, Cease Wyss, 3min
In Cease Wyss' words "This is a tribute to parents and pollinators. The sounds are of a fetal heartbeat, a baby's first 'talking' sounds, honey bees swarming and entering/exiting a hive, bumblebees buzz pollinating, and two Indigenous mothers singing the pollinators song."
H:O:M:E, Ann Hanley, 19min
Constellations is a sound art and experimental narrative collective that illuminates international artists making sound works that convey meaning through evocation and abstraction. Constellations is curated by Jess Shane and Michelle Macklem. H:O:M:E was produced in collaboration with L&NDLESS collective, an interdisciplinary group creating immersive, experimental encounters through durational performance, installation and text. L&NDLESS represents the juncture of individual and collective inquiry of its members Devika Bilmoria, Luna Mrozik-Gawler and Nithya Iyer.
Talking Trees: Tress and Time, 1h34min
The Talking Tress Series took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney Australia in the spring of 2019. Inspired by 'Janet Laurence: After Nature' exhibition at the MCA, this talk series brings together artists, researchers, scientists and advocates to exchange and discover new ideas around one of the most fundamental elements of the natural world: trees. Talking Trees explores what trees can teach us about time, language democracy, fragility, social action and artistic expression. The program has been organized in collaboration with Dr. Dalia Nassar (University of Sydney), Prof Margaret Barbour (University of Sydney), Sydney Policy Lab, the MCA, and Janet Laurence. Trees and Time explores how trees contain their own histories, capturing timescales far beyond the human lifespan. Trees and Time panelists, Mara Bun, Jonathan Jones, and Chris Turney will unpack the lessons we learn from trees about the human impact on nature.
Under the Perfect Blue Million Mile Sky, Elisa Ferrari & John Brennan, 14min
Produced as part of the Nanaimo Art Gallery exhibition's Estuaray Exhibition (2019), curated by Christian Vistan and Jesse Birch. This work contains field recordings gathered at the Nanaimo River estuary, on the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, between April and June 2019, synthetic soundscapes (movement I, III) produced on Moog Subsequent 37, and Dave Smith Prophet Rev2 analogue synthesizers, as well as Spoken Words (Movement II) from the Nanaimo Estuary Management Plan from 2006.
Who Belongs in a City?, OluTimehin Adegbey, 12min
Underneath every shiny new megacity, there's often a story of communities displaced. In this moving, poetic talk, OluTimehin Adegbeye details how government land grabs are destroying the lives of thousands who live in the coastal communities of Lagos, Nigeria to make way for a "new Dubai.". She compels us to hold our governments and ourselves accountable for keeping our cities safe for everyone. This talk was originally given at TED Global in 2017. For more information about this talk visit www.ted.com.
Locus Sonus Series, Live-Streaming Sites from Nature in the Pacific Rim, 55min eachLocus Sonus is a research laboratory in audio in arts, created in 2005 at the Aix en Provence School of arts (Ecole Supérieure d'Art d'Aix en Provence, France) by Peter Sinclair, project director, and Jerome Joy, who has to lead the project since its inception. Locus Sonus is a research group whose main aim is to explore the ever-evolving relationship between sound, place, and usage. The Locustream project is a network of open microphones who permanently stream their surrounding soundscape all over the world. Recorded live-streamed locations include Jasper Ridge National Park in California, USA, Naracoorte Caves in Southern Australia, Georo Village on Jeju Island, South Korea, The Rainforest Canopy at Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve in Queensland, Australia, and the Shiga Nature Education Park, Shiga Heights, Nagano, Otamono, Japan. One can also listen live to a variety of locations visit the Locus Sonus Stream: http://locusonus.org/soundmap.
Singing Iceberg, C. Muller, V. Schlindwein, A. Eckstaller, H. Miller, 3minA fascinating recording that was made by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine research. Scientists Christian Muller, Vera Schlindwein, Alfons Eckstaller and Heinrich Miller. These four recorded an amazing song from an iceberg in Antarctica. The soundwaves from the iceberg had a frequency of around .5 hertz, too low to be heard by humans, but when played at a higher speed and human ears can hear, the results are profound. Scientists found a 50 by 20-kilometer iceberg had collided with an underwater peninsula and was slowly scraping it around, water pushes through the ice and peninsula crevasses and tunnels at high pressure and the song begins. For more information about this recording visit: https://www.awi.de/en.html
And the Sea Gave Up the Dead Which Were In It, Myra Al-Rahim, 14minConstellations is a sound art and experimental narrative collective that illuminates international artists making sound works that convey meaning through evocation and abstraction. Constellations is curated by Jess Shane and Michelle Macklem. In Myra's words, "I wanted to explore the idea of broken sounds. I certainly feel as if many of the clips I used sustained a good amount of abuse throughout the process of creating the piece. Time, specifically, the past, also plays a central role in this piece. I wanted to cast the Past as this penetrative force that was breaking in and colonizing the present moment, preventing the course of progress into the future. My goal was to achieve a state where the space-time continuum had effectively ruptured and all the ghosts of history, uninhibited by the walls protecting the flow of progress, would come to haunt the present we occupy."
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