Sze

Djenark (The Silver Gull)(2021), a series of four audiovisual pieces commissioned by Edith Cowan University’s Department of Education based on the bird and one of its habitats – Pelican Point / Booriarup. The series explores the spiritual dimensions of Djenark in Noongar culture, as well as feelings of change, longing, separation and loss and how these relate to the artist’s own personal history. Incorporating aural and visual elements of a place in a composition can be a powerful way of exploring the intersections of time, history and geographical features that exist within a location. The combination of these elements can act as an invitation for deeper engagement through offering multiple perspectives of place. This paper explores the use of field recordings, music visualisation and sonification as ways of exploring these intersections. Techniques used to create the series include sonifying a map of the area using Iannix (a graphical sequencer), and creating music visualisations from compositions using a combination of original and modified field recordings. Through this practice, the author aims to explore how sound and visual elements can combine and resonate with the other, and how such a practice can highlight the connections between artist and place. Incorporating aural and visual elements of a place in a composition can be a powerful way of exploring the intersections of time, history and geographical features that exist within a location. The combination of these elements can act as an invitation for deeper engagement through offering multiple perspectives of place. Djenark (The Silver Gull) is an exploration of connections between artist, history and place, and how these aspects can inform the creation of a work.

Combining aural and visual elements of a place can be a powerful way of exploring the intersections of time, history and geographical features that exist within a location. I am interested in using aspects of the landscape – such as field recordings and cartographical information – as a way of exploring the history of a place and the multitude of temporalities that can exist together in place. I create my works from a combination of field recordings, both original and altered through various effects such as delay, echo, distortion, and time-stretching (through Adobe Audition and Ableton, two digital audio workstations), combined with rendering maps into a digital virtual instrument with Iannix, an open-source graphical sequencer that turns shapes and lines into cursors and trigger points for creating sound. The Swan [Derbarl Yerrigan] (2022) was originally created as part of a series of work commissioned by the State Library of Western Australia and West Australian Music, as part of a re-imagining of the State Library’s maps collection. The work combines a map of the Perth area from the 1890s, rendered into an digital virtual instrument, with field recordings taken from modern-day Perth, as a way of demonstrating how landscape can both be inspiration, and active participant, of a composition.

My friends at Burnt Seed Records are one of the stalwarts of the Perth experimental scene. I’m always grateful for their presence and their grassroots community building, including this free event at Hyde Park in celebration of Sprouted Volume 4.

I’ll be doing a laptop set in Ableton, using a combination of field recordings, modified loops and synths.

Banksias In Snow was an exhibition by GreyWing Ensemble, held at Ellenbrook Arts. The exhibition explored the sounds and shapes of nature, and I was invited to compose a graphically-notated score to be performed at the opening.

I created Cladia as a way of exploring multiple perspectives of place. It is inspired by the Lacy Coral Lichen (cladia ferdinandii), a symbiosis of fungus and algae which can be found in parts of Western Australia including an area called Toompup, north of the Stirling Ranges.

The score combined two images – a map of the Toompup area (rendered into an autonomous instrument) and a photograph of a piece of Cladia (the graphical score) as a way of inviting players to be in symbiosis with place.

From the proceedings:

Water is an element that is constantly shaping landscapes, and this power is particularly prevalent in The Burren, Ireland – a karst landscape primarily located in northwestern County Clare, Ireland. Glaciers first exposed the limestone pavement through erosion as they moved across the landscape during the Ice Age, and water still – now through rainfall – weathers away at the rock. This piece was created from a field recording of water running off part of The Burren being collected into a water tank. This field recording was then layered multiple times, with each layer manipulated by different effects, and the resultant composition was then used to create a music visualisation.

Water Study is an exploration into how a field recording can be used to create a composition, through combining the organic with digital processes. It also invites listeners to meditate on the nature of water and their relationship to this important resource.

The work was created during an artist residency hosted by Burren College of Art.

Fixed media presentation shown online and in Sydney.

streamflow is an audio-visual work mediating on the reduced levels of rainfall run-off entering Perth’s dams, due to climate change. This work was inspired by the recent drought in the South-West of Australia, which highlighted the drying conditions in the area. The work contrasts the monthly streamflow levels from 1911 – 1975 and post-1975 (in gigalitres) – where once streamflow made up a large component of Perth’s drinking water, the city has now had to diversify its water sources. streamflow is a combination of field recordings (original and altered) from around Serpentine Dam in Perth, sonification, and data visualisation via Ableton and TouchDesigner.