I. Process

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I.i Overview

In March I wrote: 

 

My recital takes the format of a 25 minute radio art piece which integrates archival audio with newly composed/recorded material in an audio collage aesthetic, and investigates the politics of this practice. The piece is written for the broadcast medium, and will be premiered on RTRFM 92.1.

Journal entry, March 2018

In November I write: 

 

My recital takes the form of an abstracted, fragmented radio-documentary titled White gums are standing with their feet in the water. Acting as a curator rather than a composer, my sonic gatherings document my experience in investigating our relationships with the Swan River, and the coexistent narratives of past and present that are carried by its water. Field recordings, multivalent dialogue, poeticised narrations and synthetic harmonies form the aesthetic vernacular, prompting un-articulable discussions in unknown languages in times and places elsewhere. 

 

This project has been more process-based than outcome-based, a development of my radiophonic practice and a documentation of my growth as a composer and a person. Condensed, the process of this work involved; 

• recording the Swan River at different points eg. where it meets the sea at Fremantle, the Nedlands Yacht Club, the newly built Matagarup bridge, the East Perth Power Station, and Noble Falls, close to where the Swan River meets the Wooroloo Brook and becomes the Avon River

• developing a practice of on-site improvisation with ecology 

• recording conversations about the Swan River with many people 

• letting these conversations lead me to other conversations and places

• responding to experiences and recordings with written text/poetry 

• reviewing material and piecing together short iterations of the work as a way of developing ideas and structures

• recording dialogue in the studio, responding to given prompts

• writing and recording narrations 

• finding threads between material and forming the structure of the piece as it is now 

• holding a small showing and feedback session with my peers

• fine editing and production 

 

This extended period of exploring, investigating and gathering allows the project to accumulate gradually, becoming what it will become, and me humbly accepting the role of letting it. Engaging with other people in dialogue and collective acts of being (like visiting a place together, field recording together) throughout the process means that it becomes a shared experience. The voices and ideas of others are infinitely more exciting than anything I could write myself. The final piece is a documentation of my experience in undertaking this project, but also a collective voicing of intersecting experiences, identities, existences. I choose to engage in this process because I feel it nurtures kind ways of being and interacting, develops interesting dialogues between people, and encourages individual and collective growth. 

 

The project began knowing the kind of format the final piece might take without knowing the content it would investigate -  I began by searching for audio in the oral history archives of the State Library of Western Australia (SLWA), looking for something that might act as a departure point for a line of inquiry/research. Having thousands of hours of archival audio at ones’ fingertips is both exciting and daunting, and having no real place to start, I found myself listening to Western Australian voices telling stories of water; interviews with lighthouse keepers in Busselton and on Rottnest Island; stories of the inactive East Perth Power Station, situated on the bank of the Swan River; childhood recollections of Perth and its early development. My natural attraction to water, and the ways in which Perth’s relationship with water, specifically the Swan River, contributes to so much of our cultural identity left me with a question; 

 

the Swan River defines Perth’s identity - it is the source of ecological richness and diversity in the Perth region, the reason European colonials decided upon this location for settlement, an important part of the Whadjuk Nyoongar peoples’ continuing culture and history. The Swan River has shaped the collective identity of the inhabitants of the area for many years past, and from its curves, pools, crossings and topography our history can be read. By this reasoning, can our future also be read topographically? 

Journal entry, April 2018

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Nurturing this magical statement fuelled a kind of faith - an open-eared approach to learning all I might about the way time and place interact in the reality we found ourselves in, and encouraged an investigation into the ways we access the past and future through the present. 

 

Jim Denley’s piece Last Day at Turkey Creek is pertinent to this discussion, offering the idea (and proof) that field recording is a method of time travel.

 

Jim has grown up with and used audio recordings his whole life and they can be powerful cultural objects. But just how powerful? Could a recording bring on a storm?

Jokiranta, M. (2014)

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In the podcast, Jim narrates his experience living in the small Indigenous community Warmun, also known as Turkey Creek, and being initiated in order to go swimming in a sacred water hole. It is said that any uninitiated person will bring on a storm by swimming - which is exactly what happens on Jim’s visit, despite all present members being initiated. Jim, in retrospect, remembers the presence of the recording device, and hypothesises that you, the listener, are in fact the uninitiated swimming member. By this we enter a discussion on the power of field recordings to transport a listener to another time and place, and what that means - do we have the power to access and influence the past by listening to it’s sonic remnant in the present? What does it mean to be the wielder of that Zoom H5, collecting the imminent now and preserving it on an SD card at 48k, through which any other person may be transported to that ‘now’ in the future now? The process of developing this piece involved a lot of ruminating on these kinds of ideas, engaging in field recording and documenting my experiences as I went. Gathered material then became the source of the final piece, taking snippets from this archive to form an audio collage. 

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I began working with this process-based approach in a previous project, a collaborative installation exhibited at Mundaring Arts Centre titled five point one and a piece of four by two, created with Shannon Lyons). For the project I essentially collated a personal audio archive of field recordings, conversations, dictated text, sounds of install, and musical material. The outcome of this project was an audio catalogue that was distributed through headphones worn while in the gallery space. Engaging in my own personal audio archiving practice was influenced by the Women’s Audio Archive, a collection of recordings taken by Marysia Lewandowska in the 1980s, and now available to the public as an online archive. 

 

The Women's Audio Archive began as a series of recordings, taped by Lewandowska after leaving her home country in 1984, grown out of an interest in language as a site of cultural displacement. These recordings document public events, seminars, talks, conferences, and private conversations as valuable records of a particular time in discourse, beginning around 1983 until 1990. Lewandowska denotes this period of time as one dominated by academics and artists close to October magazine and by feminist gatherings …

The act of sound recording began as a way to address the possibilities, as an artist and in everyday life, within a new, unfamiliar environment  through observation in gathering knowledge and participation in developing relationships …

In establishing the Women's Audio Archive, Lewandowska seeks to create a collection and a site that would act as a meeting point where the recording conversations would participate in developing a history of women in the media-visual tradition that by its ephemeral nature can easily be forgotten. The Archive, with its attention to sound acts as an incision in the hegemony of visual culture and commodity values. It gathers sound and speech, traces debates, contributing a selective commentary.

(Women's Audio Archive, 2018)

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Unlike Lewandowska's project, which presents as a public archive, the final outcome of my piece is a fragmented radio-documentary that finds threads between collected material and presents a listening narrative. I suppose what appeals to me most about this kind of work and process is an opportunity to implicate myself as a listener and learner before a composer. This process may not be explicitly political in its outcome, but allows me to develop a political practice that engages deeply with other people and their voices and stories. Throughout the process, I endeavour to exercise and develop a sense of kindness and sensitivity that delicately navigates the line of speaking on behalf of others and letting others speak. 

 

I.ii Field recording

Part of my process involved going to the river at different points along its course and taking field recordings, not only to document the sounds of the environment, but also my engagement with the environment. Influenced by Jim Denley’s improvisation practice, I began improvising ‘in-the-field’ at the places I visited, trying to develop a practice that involved the environment and its inhabitants (plants, animals, water), as an improvising partner. Also influential in developing this practice was listening to Tuva - among the spirits - sound, music and nature in Samba and Tuva, a collection of traditional Tuvan music recorded on-site.  

 

In these unprecedented on-site recordings, master musicians imitate and interact with the natural acoustic environment. Recorded in 1995-1998 on horseback, in creek beds, caves, canyons, and grasslands.

(Smithsonian Folkways Recording, 2018)

 

My vocal improvisations (which can be heard at 16'22) attempt to position the relationship between vocalist and ecology as the focus, rather than the voice itself as the centre point. In the history of field recording the idea of hifi and an untouched environment have been predominant, and I suppose my practice tries to usurp both of those ideas. In my practice I make myself present as the recordist, and attempt to draw attention to the implicit second-handedness of field recordings. Being able to hear the recordist reminds a listener of their ability to only ever experience a field recording as a remnant of another time and place, and discourages the idea that a field recording may be a substitute for actually experiencing the ‘now’. 

 

Gabi Losoncy’s work also positions the recordist as present, often producing work that is reminiscent of excerpts from a personal audio archive; single-take, lofi, linear recordings of mundane happenings; 

 

Gabi Losoncy … makes various decisions with outer consequences based on how she feels, and to the end of expressing how she feels. Generally working in unlayered, linear audio … she expands her practice on a case-by-case basis, making great effort not to do anything  unnecessary.

(Cafe Oto, 2017)

 

My process and approach to field recording in this project was a way of documenting my experiences with the river, and gradually building a small archive that traced the development of my relationship with the Swan River and Perth ecology. 

 

I.iii Studio dialogue

This is the first piece that I’ve used studio recorded dialogue, as all my previous radiophonic works have used on-site interview material (mostly using a Zoom H5). I used both composed text (for my narrations) and dialogue which was generated by the speakers I invited into the studio, responding to questions and prompts that I prepared. These prompts were all relatively open-ended, and involved content that was difficult to articulate. I embraced the excitement of never being able to know exactly what answer a question would yield, and tried to generate discussion around the idea of ghosts and remnants, uncovering the way we talk about and deal with time. Below are some of the questions I asked participants:

 

• What is a ghost? 

• What are the remnants of your existence? 

 

I also tried to generate abstract material that was drawn from the river, but was evasive and at times became nonsensical;

 

• Describe the shape of the Swan River as if communicating to someone who was attempting to draw this shape, but do not use place names. Move in a North Eastward direction beginning at the Fremantle harbour.  

• Beginning at the Fremantle harbour, trace the Swan River in a North Eastward direction, and include any anecdotes, details or mentions of places that are in some way significant to you; maybe your Aunt lives there, maybe you have a childhood memory from this place, maybe you drive past the place on your way to work etc. Include place names. 

 

While perhaps appearing like nonsense, I found this process incredibly beautiful; people’s responses became like these flitting remnants of the river, uncovering poeticism beneath the functional and mundane ways we interact with and articulate the landscape. In the narration I wrote as a response to this experience, I touch upon the way we piece together our understanding of the river from the ways it intersects our existence and experiences, not as a landscape of itself that we interact with. It is maybe too obvious to say that us humans are too often only concerned with ourselves; 

 

The same water intersects all these identities, experiences, histories. Collective cartographers, a landscape we have mapped from our existences. And we hate to think that this landscape existed long before we did.

Journal entry, October

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I.iv Struggles

The biggest struggles in undertaking this work were dealing with the politics involved in using other people’s voices, dealing with anxiety and imposter syndrome while working essentially as a ‘researcher’ (gathering and documenting like an anthropologist might), and finding a way to condense huge ideas, feelings, experiences, and amounts of material into a concise yet insightful 25 minute piece. 

 

To put things into perspective, I have around 14 hours of audio that I gathered over the 9 month period for this project specifically. Tangled amongst those many hours there are certain threads that connect ideas and experiences, and those threads have been drawn out to underpin the work. Surrounding those threads are a lot of avenues of inquiry that ultimately weren’t pertinent to this iteration of the piece, (though still contributed to the process and experience). Navigating my way in and out of those avenues was one of my struggles; trying to serve the piece, be true to the initial intention but let intuition lead me into the unexpected rabbit holes that give life and depth to a work. 

 

Learning to trust my intuition was important to my growth, and to the amalgamation of the piece. About a month out from the recital date the piece still didn’t have a structure or form; having been led down these wayward avenues I found myself not knowing what form the piece would take at all, and quite overwhelmed with anxiety. At this point I had a very important discussion with my Principal Studies teacher Josten Myburgh, which reminded me of a very important fact: this piece didn’t have to be anything I didn’t want it to be. Reminded of my original excitement and sense of the piece, I felt that I needed to record some studio dialogue (which turned into the prompts on ghosts, remnants, and topography of the river). This studio dialogue, along with narrations that I wrote and recorded over the duration of the next week, underpinned the structure and content of the final piece. 

 

In case it is of any interest, here is some of the material that I didn’t use, (dug up from all those rabbit holes):

• field recordings (a lot) 

  • Transperth train, Fremantle line 

  • the dam and creek at my childhood home in Gidgegannup

  • contact microphone recordings around the Nedlands Yacht Club jetty

  • narrated drive from Noble Falls to my childhood home 

• studio material

  • dialogue about time travel 

  • saxophone and vocal improvisations

• On-site dialogue & improvisations

  • conversations from a day trip to Fremantle, chatting to people I met on the street 

  • vocal improvisations in the creek bed of Wydgee Station, Paynes Find (where my parents live) 

  • river discussions in Paynes Find with my two close friends (also collaborators for the project Book Club) 

  • a lot of iPhone voice memos trying to articulate ideas and feelings

• and of course with any material that is included in the piece, there ​is all the audio from that recording that I didn't use.