Balance-Unbalance 2015

Session 4 Panel Stream: Place Making in the Arts

Deborah Ely, Mike Legett, Keith Armstrong, and Garth Paine: "Strategic Intervention in Art and Science Dialogues--SITEWORKS"
The Bundanon Trust was established 21 years ago by Arthur Boyd, one of Australia's best known painters, who noted that he "couldn't exhaust this landscape" and directed that the 3000 acres of riverside rainforest bush be used for scientific research and agriculture as well as art, education and recreation. Investigations across disciplines have led to surprising outcomes characterized by the sharing of ideas about process, materials and the role of risk and experiment. 

SITEWORKS is a research program centered in an Australian bush location three hours' drive south of Sydney. It brings together local, national and international artists, scientists, professional performers, communities of expertise and audiences drawn from across the region for an annual two-day event at the summation of several months of thematic research. 

The panel will outline the experience of managing and developing the Sitework model and provide some insights and conclusions about its success as a format for bringing together diverse practices and expertises. Conference participants working in this area will join in better understanding and evaluating how threats to climate, water, food and shelter can be addressed through collaborative interventions involving artists, scientists and the enfranchised citizen.

Stephan Moore, Alison Deming, Raphael Sagarin, and Glenn Wayant: "Soundscapes: Barometers of a Changing World"
Four presenters from diverse backgrounds will reflect upon issues of “soundscape awareness” and its implications for understanding the changes taking place in the earth’s climate. 

1. Sound as Place Making. I spend summers on Grand Manan Island off the coast of New Brunswick. My sense of belonging and my sense of being part of something much larger than the human world are keyed there by sounds: crows and gulls; bald eagles, which were never there during my childhood so their calls are always an alarm of pleasure; whale exhalations carrying across the water; the surf sieving through beach rocks. But it is the sounds of work that are most strangely pleasurable and place-making for me: the various sounds of working boats and the growl of the ferry. The changing sounds of work are particularly resonant--a juxtaposition of tradition in the sound of a pile driver pounding weir stakes into the ocean floor as opposed to the gaseous mechanical blowing sound at the salmon cages when workers blow feed into the impounded fish. These are huge cultural signifiers for what's going on at this place where fisheries are collapsing. 

2. As a field ecologist I try to cultivate all of my observational senses, and soundscapes are particularly vital in the coastal ecologies where I work, providing research data (the barks of sea lions), safety (the ripple of a rising tide), and aesthetic connection to the coast. Now that I also work with a highly managed coastal ecosystem—the indoor ocean biome in the Biosphere 2, I am working to understand the appropriate soundscape for our shared research, outreach, and education missions. As we reimagine our artificial ocean with a plan to transform it into a living model of the Gulf of California, do we pipe in “natural” coastal soundscapes (bird calls and waves crashing), as many aquaria do, or do we preserve the industrial noise (air handlers, wave generators) of a working scientific facility? 

3. Synopsis of The Sonorous Desert City Project: Suite I-III, which seeks to reacquaint Tucson (and newly acquaint the rest of the world) with our shared aural landscape through listening experiences and a limited edition recording composed from hundreds of field recordings made over a six month period in 2013. Discussion of Tucson as a sonically resonant city surrounded by the Sonoran Desert --- a sonorous desert ---- with a unique and often under-appreciated sound ecology. Presentation of Tucson's overall tone or audible fingerprint, directly attributable to its unique blend of wildlife, architecture, culture, commerce and geographic location. 

4. As a sound artist and a curator of sound art, I reflect upon the use of sound art to focus the attention of a listening audience on sounds past those within the art, towards those within the environment. I will examine several of the pieces within my recent (and continuing) exhibition In the Garden of Sonic Delights, in upstate New York, for traces of the artist’s listening attention, and in some cases the artwork’s own listening attention, and discuss the possibility of the transfer of this awareness to an audience.