Here Now Hear
[part of the sonic graphology series]
An ongoing project in which Gail takes sounds from the gallery environment creating compositions, textual responses and visual works such as wall tracings and her spectral zither pieces.
The project has had two iterations:
Here Now Hear Blindside Gallery, Melbourne, 11 October - 4 November, 2023
Here Now Hear, Our Neon Foe , Sydney 29 September - 1 October 2022
Here Now Hear, Blindside Gallery
The Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne
11 October - 4 November 2023
Here Now Hear explores the way in which sound positions us in place and presentness. The title can be understood as both statement and invitation. It references the way in which listening allows us to connect with our presentness and our position in space and place. This is an essential effect of sound and listening but one that can get lost in loud city environments as we increasingly seek escape through external “curated” soundtracks.
Using sounds gathered from the surrounding city streets and the building itself, the works offer sonic and visual representations of site and moment through soundscapes, wall pieces and text experiments. As an artist working digitally with sound I struggle with how to offer visual anchors for the audience in a way that is essentially drawn from the sound itself. This has manifested in a range of process in which I manipulate the graphic representations of sounds as they appear in my digital audio tools. In Here Now Hear I am intrigued by the visual imagery created by spectral analysis, in particular the frequency plot in which the frequencies are mapped moment by moment.
Wall Works — To & Fro | Up & Down
At the core of the installation are two soundscapes based on field recordings of the interior and exterior of the Nicholas Building. I then draw on these graphic forms to create wall tracings and hand-crafted objects to visualise particular sonic moments. I work with real world materials as a challenge to my reliance on digital software with its neat and measurable digital processes and parameters.
Live Soundscape — Listening Through Glass
Accompany the internal and external compositions is a soundscape that is generated live by placing contact microphones on the windows of the gallery. Placing transducers (speakers) near the microphones, the inside and outside entwine through the relational loop of feedback — a sonic solidification of the moment.
Texts — To & Fro: Sonic Strata | Up & Down: Vertical Village
Finally, there are two text experiments that extend the exploration of these soundworlds into words. To & Fro offers a textual spectrum of the street soundscape, placing the sounds in layers according to their dominant frequency band. Exploring an awkward onomatopoeia to describe these sounds, I was curious to discover a kind of patterning to the vowel sounds as we move up through the spectrum. Up & Down is a loose interpretation of a mesostic, a creative writing form employed by John Cage. Here I draw on the nature of the Nicholas Building as “vertical village” that is currently under threat from development.
Our Neon Foe Residency Sept 2022
411 Parramatta Rd, Leochhardt
29 September - 1 October Exhibition of works in development
1 October Performance of Here Now Hear Score
During a month-long residency Gail captured sounds and signs from the busy strip of Parrammatta Road, where the artist-run-space Our Neon Foe is located. She would got to the gallery in the evenings and sit in dark, listening to the traffic hum and the clarinet lessons upstairs; watching the lights from passing cars flicker across the space. She picked up abandoned bits of furniture to work with, and collected the names of business past and present that line the block. From these sources she developed a series of pieces that reflected these ways of trying to be and respond to this space and place.
On the final afternoon, she invited some people to join her in using the passing traffic as score, so that they "played" Parramatta Rd. Thanks to Jim Denley, Laura Altman, Matthew Hopkins and Romy Caen for performing.
Live Sound — Tuned Traffic
A live feed of the soundscape of Parramatta Rd is tweaked and tuned into an ever evolving realtime composition played through tactile speakers, near field monitors and cymatics generating sub.
Wall Work — Zither Analysis
Inspired by the spectral analysis of the sound of Parramatta Rd, nails and copper wire are configured to illustrate a sonic moment also and also form a sculptural relief reminisicent of a stringed instrument.
Wall Tracing
A large scale wall-tracing of a snaphot of the sound of of the tuned traffic as represeted by spectral analysis.
Video — SIGNS SIGNS SIGNS
A sampling of the signs that line the blocks of Parramatta Rd forming a kind of absurdist poetry.
Performance — Here Now Hear: Score
The Here Now Hear ensemble of Gail Priest, Laura Altman, Matthew Hopkins, Jim Denley and Romy Caen, playing the lanes of traffic and pedestrians passing by the Our Neon Foe windows on a spring Saturday afternoon ( 1 October , 2023). Photos by Samuel James.