Ear Drops: Sonic Boundaries

Brought to you by Frequency Oz, Sonic Boundaries is the second series of Ear Drops, a collection of sound rich audio drops that range from spoken narrative driven works to explorative sound and radio art works designed to ‘unblock’ ears that have been blocked up by decades of predictable listening habits. Curated by Colin Black, Sonic Boundaries features some of Australia’s prominent sound artists, composers and radio makers including David Chesworth, Jim Denley, Cat Hope, Jo Truman, and Yanna Black.

As societies across the world are undergoing disruptive, often disorienting social, cultural and geographical shifts, artists were asked to respond to the themes of “Capture, Location, Displacement”. For this series the artists have explored the meanings of these trends, expressing their responses in very personal ways. Through the diversity of these experiences and interpretations the themes in Sonic Boundaries evolved and expanded to include issues around the displacement of peoples in the landscape, psychological and physical boundaries, displaced intergenerational trauma, emotional fragility and violence. The result is an aural topography in which artists take listeners across sonic boundaries and offer the opportunity for deep reflection.

All Out There by David Chesworth

All Out There explores ideas of site, location and experience as well as our uneasy relationship with authority and control. It also addresses and interrogates the participant’s behaviour and agency. This work includes an encounter with a strange narration that hints at an epic, transformative journey.

Boxed Objects Rattling Bars by David Chesworth
The sonic world of Boxed Objects Rattling Bars is very alien. It consists of objects that are active within frames and enclosures that resonate as the objects come into contact with edges and boundaries.

Calyute by Cat Hope
Calyute was an Indigenous Australian resistance leader who was involved in a number of struggles between white settlers and members of other tribes in the early days of the Swan River Colony, Western Australia. He was involved in the 1834 Pinjarra Massacre, in which over 20 people were killed. This work uses field recordings from the area of the massacre, and treats them to various “masking” processes. Sub tones drawn from the recording are also included. The piece looks at the way we can hide sounds through effects, using different techniques of “burying”. The transposition process is a metaphor for the inaudibility of certain voices in the Australian landscape. The work aims to challenge the idea of field recording as truth and reflects on how oral histories struggle to compete with written histories when validating the past.

Lupara by Cat Hope

Lupara is an Italian word used to refer to a sawn-off shotgun. It is traditionally associated with Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian organized crime group but they are also often used in hunting. This piece takes a field recording of a Lupara in use in Umbria, Italy, at the end of hunting season. This work is an attempt to capture something of the mafia culture and its weaponry in a very different environment. Rather than taking place in the forests of Sicily, the sound is relocated to the open fields of wealthy Umbria, a stark contrast to the poverty found in Sicily where mafia 'workers’ are often sourced.

Babel Free Radio by Colin Black

Babel Free Radio is intended as a play on words of Radio Free Europe, a radio network established in the 1950s, providing news, information, and analysis to countries "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed." The subject of Babel Free Radio it is not the information but rather the medium: the free flow and use of radio as a carrier of audio art, sound art and radio art. In a landscape in which global media conglomerates increasingly look to expand their influence over world markets, Babel Free Radio seeks to reappropriate a portion of communication space for art and audio media experimentation.

Just Another Day by Colin Black
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, nearly half the population will experience a mental disorder at some stage in their lives. This piece, featuring The Song Company singers together with the artist reading lists of negative emotions and accompanied by electric guitar, expresses the pressures, distorted perspectives and demands that society places on us to function with inhuman perfection.
Vocals by Clive Birch, Richard Black, Nicole Thomson and Ruth Kilpatrick.
Conducted by Roland Peelman.

A Brief History of Scars: Relocating Self by Jo Truman
This work refers to a place of healing and tranquillity a farm property called “Richlands” near the town of Taralga. The artist recorded the “natural” and “unnatural” sounds of this beautiful site, including native birds, cows, winds and a passing car. The microtonal vocal techniques represent an attempt to connect with the natural environment and a sense of place.

Deafening Feedback by Jim Denley

In Deafening Feedback, Jim Denley walks with a Hard Disc recorder from Myall Creek (20 km east of the small town of Bingara, New England, Northern NSW) to the ridge above. In this piece we listen to the world — trucks and cars crossing the nearby bridge, the frogs, the birds. We are simultaneously forced to superimpose another imagined soundscape from another world, 178 years earlier when a group of stockman massacred up to 30 Wirrayaraay people. We know a great deal about the event because of the two trials that led to the eventual conviction and hanging of seven of the perpetrators. Deafening Feedback relies on information from Roger Milliss’s seminal study of the event, ‘Waterloo Creek’.

Oblivious by Jim Denley
In Oblivious, late one October Saturday in 2015, Jim Denley opened his apartment windows, set up two mics and played flute with the Sydney night. A currawong calls, a neighbour's party ebbs and flows and the city hums.

Curlew by Yanna Black

In this series, the artist has chosen to focus on the boundary between life and death. This piece is inspired by the expressive sounds of the Bush Stone Curlew birds crying out at night and new evidence revealing epigenetic ancestral links to intergenerational trauma.

The curlew bird is a significant voice in this work, as it is shrouded in Aboriginal mythology that speaks of a mother's anguish at the loss of her child. In Aboriginal folklore, the cry of the curlew can also herald a death, as the curlew comes to accompany the spirit to the afterlife. The conversational voices in the background reflect life going on as usual and sometimes, almost unnoticeably, referencing the poetic narrative.

The Audio Guide to Life by Yanna Black
Set in an art gallery, The Audio Guide to Life forms a diptych to Curlew. This piece reflects on the repetitive and seemingly futile cycles of life. Has the human story on this earth changed over millennia? The artist questions what we could do, as individuals and as a species, to create a meaningful existence. What makes for a satisfying life ? At the point of death do we resign ourselves to or struggle with the outcome of our life? What do we challenge and must we simply accept?
Voiced by Nicholas Kargilis.