Padme is a solar powered digital audio floating sculpture that is activated by wave motion and by water birds nudging the antennae-like motion sensing ‘whiskers’ that radiate from the work.

Padme (Nelumbo nucifera), the sacred lotus, is an aquatic plant that plays a central role in Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

Views of the Padme Installation

The lotus is an ancient polyvalent symbol in the Asia society. Hindus revere it with the gods Vishnu, Brahma, and the goddesses Lakshmi, Sarasvati and Kubera. Often used as an example of divine beauty and purity, Vishnu is often described as the ‘Lotus-Eyed One’. The lotus, springs from the navel of Vishnu whilst he is in Yoga Nidra. The lotus blooms uncovering the creator god Brahma in padmasana.

Its unfolding petals suggest the expansion of the soul. The growth of its pure beauty from the mud of its origin holds a benign spiritual promise. Particularly Brahma and Lakshmi, the divinities of potency and wealth, have the lotus symbol associated with them.

Zhou Dunyi: “I love the lotus because while growing from mud, it is unstained.”

The Adrift project was conceived and realised for the Memory Flows exhibition at the CarriageWorks in Sydney and comprised of two sounding vessels. My trusty sea kayak “Siika” pressed into sonic-service, equipped with a “Solid-Drive” transducer that transformed the entire hull into a speaker diaphragm ~ relaying a hydrophone recording of ship’s propeller rumble and SONAR.

The Ark, captive in a trawler net releasing a medley of fish names in English and Latin, whilst below a primitive Voltaic Cell composed of Zinc and Copper fish shaped electrodes appear to supply a mysterious power source.

Listen to a stereo sample from the project

Visit the Gallery]]> 2009-09-07T09:59:51+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/ecolocated/ environmental project, social history, arts and science, interactive new media M.A.R.I.N. will make a debut at ISEA2009 Belfast in August 2009. This first expedition, the “Irish Sea EcoLocated Residency”, will focus on Littoral cultures: how marine ecologies close to human settlements are perceived by scientists and local communities, and how our art & science research team will introduce new cultural strategies to interlace them.

The MARIN vessel in Belfast harbour.

This first collaborative residency aboard the MARIN craft, entitled Ecolocated: Littoral Lives will be realized by three artists, Nigel Helyer (AU), Tapio Mäkelä (FI), and Andreas Siagian (ID), supported by Daniel Woo and Michael Lake from University of North-South Wales, Sydney.

The Firth of Inverness.

The team will run water quality tests, make field recordings, interviews, and geotag information to create a location based immersive, surround-sound installation, technically based upon AudioNomad software.

Entering Inverness harbour.

EcoLocated will extend beyond the gallery context by initiating a range of local community workshops.  Stage one of the installation will open at the Catalyst Arts gallery in Belfast on August 6th with stage two opening for the ISEA symposium which takes place between August 23rd and September 1st 2009.

Ben Nevis.

Tapio taking a water quality sample.

We have arrive safe and sound, albeit a little damp after a thirteen day yoyage across the North Sea, though the Caledonian Canal (that bisects Scotland from Inverness to Fort William) and then past the isles of Jura and Islay, across the North Channel to Ulster.  Now the work begins!

Belfast Port.

The AudioNomad interface for the Stage 2 Ecolocated exhibition, Catalyst Arts, Belfast ISEA2009.

The following audio snippets are sample files that form the ‘raw material’ of the AudioNomad 3D spatial audio composition ~ better than nothing but the only way to experience the real thing is to experience the real thing!

Listen to a sonification of water quality data_01

Listen to a sonification of water quality data_02

Listen to a sonification of water quality data_03

Listen to a sonification of water quality data_04

Listen to a sonification of water quality data_05

Listen to a sonification of water quality data_06

Listen to a stereo sample from the project_01

Listen to a stereo sample from the project_02

Listen to a stereo sample from the project_03

Listen to a stereo sample from the project_04

Listen to a stereo sample from the project_05

Listen to a stereo sample from the project_06

Listen to a stereo sample from the project_07

12.2 surround rig with triple projection showing water quality data visualisation.

Visit the Gallery]]> 2009-08-04T18:09:37+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/zephyr/ sound sculpture, public art, environmental project Zephyr ~ an Æolian Harp kinetic Sculpture for the Geraldton foreshore.

Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a World like this,
Where e’en the Breezes of the simple Air
Possess the power and Spirit of Melody!

Coleridge, The Æolian Harp.

This project has been a long time coming, being delayed by changes in the site soon after the commission was awarded.  Here are some contemporary images of the project as re-defined, followed by the original outline and sketches.

The project currently is conceived with two pylons supporting counter balanced aerofoils.

Each element will be some 8m ~ 10m tall.

In the O’Connor workshop starting to rough out the plug for the main foil.

Sinker or a floater?

Forming the lateral profile using jigs and a heavy duty router to cut reference lines into the wooden blank.

The functional model used to determine kinetic behaviour.

Yet another use for a Ute.

Sketch of the bearings and foil connections.

Original Project Descriptor. The principal metaphorical drivers in the conceptualization of the design are based upon C19 maritime technologies that relied upon harnessing the natural forces of wind and water, with sail, simple mechanical purchase and balance and ballast. “Zephyr” establishes strong links with the maritime and industrial history of the Geraldton site with the ancient technology of Æolian music to form a suite of passive, kinetic sound sculptures, that is responsive to the environment.

Æolian harps were frequently installed in landscape contexts during the C18.th and C19.th century and it became a romantic custom in Germany to place Æolian harps at mysterious sites like ruined castles, parks and caverns.  Many poems and fieldnames recall such old customs, which obviously made a deep impression on the audience visiting these spots.

Structure. It is proposed that “Zephyr” shall consist of up to three vertical wind vane type structures, each supporting a sail-like pair of aerofoils with a passive sound emitting Æolian device embedded in the interior air passage.  The foil section will additionally act as a sound resonator to passively amplify the relatively quiet harmonic sounds that these devices produce. ‘Zephyr’ addresses concepts of balance and equilibrium found in both natural systems (the cycles of the weather and the ocean) as well as those of human technologies (the rigs of sailing ships) each unit will feature counter balanced foils (see schematics) in addition the strung arrays of the Æolian harps will be kept under a constant tension by a balance device and thus require no additional tuning or maintenance. The structure recalls the form of the Square rigged sailing ships and physically regenerate (albeit in a more tuned manner) the sonic ecology of the sailing era, with the murmur of a breeze in the rigging. At this juncture my preference is for a design with up to three Aeolian sculpture units, identical in structure but tuned to different harmonics, this will ensure a rich level of sonic and visual complexity.  Naturally the detailed design stage may indicate budgetary constraints and limit the number of proposed units ~ however whilst even a single unit would function adequately, two (or more) would provide a visual and sonic counterpoint to the soundscape and the landscape.

Information on Æolian harp. Wind-gradient - Near the ground the wind-speed decreases rapidly due to ground- friction. The higher over the ground, the better is it, the smaller the gradient-effect and the higher the wind-speed. Normally, spectators in the windward side of the harp cause a “wind-shadow” or at least undesired vortices; so, the harp commonly stops playing just then, when an interested person is approaching. Therefore it makes sense to position the harp over the heads of the audience.

The tones of an Æolian harp - These are mostly the harmonics of a string. The ground-tone, or fundamental is the tone if the string is plucked; it is of low intensity and can seldom be heard. However, depending on the wind-speed, several tones at one time can be heard on one string - new tones appear, while other tones begin to disappear. The stronger the wind is, the higher the pitches of the sounds will be.

It is mainly the tension of the string and not its length determines the tuning of the string whereas the length of the string is responsible for the intensity of the tones: The longest strings will produce the loudest tones. The diameter of the string plays an important role: It is the relation of wind velocity and diameter of the string, which is responsible for the frequency of the tone.

Sympathetic Resonance ~ the shorter the single strings are, the more it becomes desirable to place them close to another in order to facilitate the strings influencing one another to resonate sympathetically.

]]> 2008-12-10T00:07:18+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/biosonics/ BioSonics is a significant development of former prototype works that investigate the morphology of microscopic marine organisms. The Western Plains Museum and Art Gallery July until September 28th 2008. BioSonics installed at Western Plains Cultural Centre August 2008. sound sculpture, arts and science The rational and the fantastical: the morphology of Nigel Helyer, by Gail Priest 2008

Despite Star Trek’s propagandist efforts for space as the final frontier, the vast unknown can be found much closer to home in the form of the earth’s oceans. Occupying approximately 79% of the planet it is estimated that only 5% of the watery depths have yet been explored. With the threat of impending environmental disaster the drive to better understand the global ocean has increased and advanced technologies (often similar to those used in space explorations) have enabled access to these previously unreachable zones. However prior to the technological wizardry of the latter 20th century scientists had already been exploring the dark, mysterious realms.

An acknowledged inspiration for Nigel Helyer’s work is the German scientist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). A biologist, he was a strong advocate for Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories and through his own research identified and named thousands of marine species, as well as developing significant methodologies for the study of biological form and structure known as morphology. What is most influential about Haeckel is that he was also a gifted artist. Before photography and computers scientists were reliant on artistic illustration to communicate their findings and the works of Haeckel, documenting his travels and discoveries, are exquisite. The scientific and the artistic are generally considered to be oppositional views: science is reliant on fact and rationality, while art often employs flights of fancy beyond what is accepted as reality. Haeckel struggled with this dichotomy and occasionally his artistic inclination dominated his empirical processes with some of his lavishly illustrated findings considered dubious. For example he employed considerable artistic licence illustrating the ‘similarities’ of the embryonic forms of a range of animals such as the salamander, chicken, cow and human which have since been refuted. However the relationship between art and science is in fact not so incompatible: both practices rely upon experimentation, innovation and even inspiration to achieve their aims.

In Nigel Helyer we see the inverse of Haeckel. Helyer is an artist with a remarkable fluency in the world of the technical and the scientific. Not only does he deftly employ technologies in his work – creating a meaningful, unfetishised usage ensuring that the concepts remain foremost – but he also delves behind standard techniques and devices participating in the very research and development of new technologies. This is evidenced by his involvement in AudioNomad, an ongoing research project (with the University of NSW) into mobile and location sensitive delivery systems for immersive sound works. AudioNomad was used for the Syren for Port Jackson project (2006) in which a small ferry travelled around Sydney Harbour, the journey mapped via Global Positioning Satellites (GPS), triggering an immersive multispeaker sound journey telling the hidden histories of the foreshores.

The contemporary art science nexus is being extensively interrogated in the field of bio-art, in which artists engage in laboratory practices, using elements of (arguably) living biological material to create artworks. Australia is home to one of the leading facilities, SymbioticA, based at The University of Western Australia. Helyer has been involved with the lab creating his project Host, recently exhibited as part of Ars Electronica, Austria and Transitio_MX02 New Media Arts Exhibition in Mexico City in 2007. Many of Helyer’s works combine a mix of rigour and humour and Host is no exception, using intricate technology to record the electrical activity of the aural nerve of a cricket as it listens to a lecture on the sex-life of its own species. The results are represented by an oscilloscope and a sonic interpretation of the data, along with the heavily pixilated image of the original lecture (perhaps a suggestion as to what the cricket sees).

In BioSonics Helyer draws together the preoccupations of these works above: science, living forms, and the sea. Encircling the space is a plethora of exotic sculptural sea creatures. These are extrapolations of life forms inspired by the microscopic wonders of the ocean depths, which have long been the focus of marine biologists, from Haeckel’s era to the present, as they offer insights into the process of evolution itself. Helyer has magnified these creatures, normally invisible to the naked human eye (he studied them via a Scanning Electron Microscope) to illustrate their intricate forms and symmetries.

Also drawing upon these microscopic physical forms is the sound sculpture Hydra. The Medusa-like tentacles imply a tactility and yet, in this work, are the vehicle for aural communication. Like a menacing sea monster the Hydra has ensnared a strange dwarf ark housing small speakers transmitting lists of fish species – while the fish didn’t need Noah’s conservation services during the great flood, they could do with his help now.

The final work is Transformer in which larval forms embalmed in honey (a gourmet mummification) are encircled by rustic antennae. It’s a kind of techno-shamanistic artefact literally drawing on the electromagnetic energy of the universe to re-animate matter in the form of vibration, creating an inaudible yet undeniably present soundscape.

The accumulative effect of these works is that of a peculiar aquarium in which the microscopic is manifested massive while the massive (the ark, the electromagnetic universe) becomes diminutive. And of course it is not unimportant that BioSonics is presented at the Dubbo Regional Gallery, which essentially transports the ocean 400km into the heart of grazing country, alluding to the ‘inland sea’ that Charles Sturt, John Oxley and other explorers endeavoured to discover in the middle of this dry land. Of course scientist and artists are also explorers: scientists map the mysteries of the inner workings of the universe while artists attempt to map the infinite permutations of the imagination. The world that Nigel Helyer has mapped for us in BioSonics is curious, mythical and fascinating, perhaps more so because it is based in rigorous research and scientific realities.

Visit the Gallery

Gail Priest is a Sydney-based sound artist, curator and writer on sound and media-arts.

Endnotes National Geographic, U.S. Deep-Sea Expedition Probes Earth’s Final Frontier For more information go to the national geographic link. Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (1904) - Artforms of Nature offering a stunning collection of illustrations is out of print but many plates are viewable at For more information go to this link. ]]> 2008-06-08T06:41:02+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/ghostrain/ social history, radiophonic During 2008 Nigel held the ABC Radiophonic Fellowship and developed a project entitled GhosTrain that deals with memories (and amnesia) surrounding Sydney’s Eveleigh Railyards.

The first stage of the GhosTrain project created a series of short Radio Broadcasts and a Podcast website focused upon the Redfern Locomotive & Eveliegh Carriage Works.  The project addressed the oral histories and acoustic ecologies of Industrial culture.  The second stage developed this content into to a major sound-installation for TPS at The Carriage-works and the proposed third stage will see an Oral History project for mobile devices.

The overall work aims to create a series of ‘audio-portraits’ of the Redfern Locomotive & Eveliegh Carriage Works that encompass, the oral histories and acoustic ecologies of Industrial culture.  Audio content will be drawn from an Oral History project to be established with former Rail-yard workers, archival sources, actuality recordings of Rail technology and environments as well as from a series of contemporary rail journeys.

Check out some GhosTrain material on POOL including audio recordings of the five ‘Stations’.

GhosTrain ~ a rationale:

When we consider changing socio-economic landscapes we naturally focus our attention upon the more obvious physical features of the shifting usage of architectural structures and major environmental infrastructures.

In a marked contrast, the transient elements, that are the soul of living cultures, are difficult to seize upon and tend to be quickly forgotten; erased under changing patterns of work and social usage.  The iconic sounds that characterise a locale are one of the most fragile and difficult of these transient elements to recognise, evaluate and value. The acoustic ecologies of industrial landscapes are prime examples of our extraordinary capacity for amnesia.  Closely observed every location has a characteristic ‘soundscape’ in effect a sonic ‘fingerprint’, formed from a complex mix of smaller incidental sounds’ punctuated by unique, ‘keynote’ sounds that are site-specific and directly associated with the particular structures and activities found at the location. Good examples of the iconic nature of “Keynote” sounds are the Imman’s call to prayer in Istanbul or the Fog-horns of San Francisco.

The discipline of Acoustic Ecology recognises that contemporary trends driven by Globalisation, the ubiquitous spread of urbanism, mechanised transport and forms of labour result in a homogenisation of world ‘soundscapes’, reducing both the variety, character and uniqueness of local acoustic ecologies. This proposal seeks to redress such oversight by addressing the unique Architectural heritage and social history of the Redfern Locomotive & Eveliegh Carriage Works sites from a sonic perspective ~ recognising the importance of the soundscape that once characterised the site and endeavouring to re-instate specific elements of its acoustic ecology and oral history.

GhosTrain ~ History and Amnesia

I’m very, very concerned about this construction of history as somehow   divided from the present, there is a continuity there always will be.   It   suits certain interests to construct the past as a foreign country which can then be commodified for exploitation, be it cultural, tourism of some sort, or redevelopment of sites to make them appear unique, however I dispute this ‘discontinuity’ view of the past.

Lucy Taksa

The Eveleigh Railway Workshops site is impressive on a number of levels; its robust industrial architecture, the simple repurposing of the site as a cultural space; set against the lingering knowledge that this was a site of labour ~ of  specialised knowledge and skill and of a lifestyle all but forgotten in  Sydney’s upwardly mobile affluent society.

In considering the changing socioeconomic landscape of our cities our attention is drawn towards the more obvious physical features of the shifting usage of architectural structures and major environmental infrastructures.  However in marked contrast, it is the transient elements that are the soul of living cultures but these are difficult to seize upon and tend to be quickly forgotten; erased under changing patterns of work and social usage. The iconic sounds that characterise a locale are one of the most fragile and difficult of these transient elements to recognise, evaluate and maintain, yet in essence they hold the key to memory and identity.

As Lucy Taksa indicates, the construction of history is a premeditated political enterprise and creates a sharp divide between the unheeded plural voices of individuals and the authorised grand narrative that is History.  GhosTrain is not so much about our experience of listening per se but about listening to the stories of a community that has been ignored; a listening-in to a the silences of a location, not simply to a workplace but to an entire culture that has been conveniently dismissed and transformed in a manner that erases all traces and renders it palatable and commodifiable.

Project development.

GhosTrain is designed in three stages and aims to recognise the importance of the soundscape that once characterised the site and endeavours to reinstate specific elements of its acoustic ecology and the memories contained within oral history.  Stage 1 constituted a series of five broadcasts produced at  ABC Radio National and established contact with a range of ex-railway workers interlacing their oral histories with commentaries from historians, architects etc ~ in effect the research phase, collecting material and getting under the complex skin of the site.

Stage 2, produced in collaboration with The Performance Space, seeks to reinstate a keynote sound within the main architectural space, in order to resound the acoustic ecology of the site.  Each day the speaker rig will play the 1 o’clock work siren (reputedly once used by all the local shops to set their clocks) to be followed by 90 seconds of a steam loco, shunting along the axis of the building ~ a simple sonic haunting, designed to rekindle people’s memory and associations and to honour those who spent their working lives in the Railyards.

Installing the speaker array along the principal axis of the CarriageWorks.

The final, Stage 3 is in the form of mobile acoustic Ars Memoria.   My research showed that many previous employees felt cheated of their working history, seeing the physical locus of their labours gentrified and none of the original meaning or heritage retained or represented (save for  some well hidden brass plaques on the Redfern site).  The mere restoration of  bricks and mortar is senseless in this context, what is missing is an acknowledgement of the social and cultural histories told in multiple voices from the community and situated in the appropriate places.   

It is my  intention to develop a location sensitive augmented audio reality  sonic-cartography which will operate on iPhones with content delivered as a free download via the AudioNomad spot on the iTunes store (this bundles the content and player application).  This mobile onsite experience will be augmented by an off site web base interactive mapping system entitled “JourneyScapes”.

Sketch interactive sound map based upon the original; workshop blueprint.

detail of interface.

Set up for community discussions of future creative developments.

GhosTrain, a train of thought.

By Robyn Ravlich.

Nigel Helyer is a gifted contemporary artist who uses current audio and computer technologies to make the sounds of the past reverberate in order to bring the focus of our attention back to what that past entailed.  In the second phase of his Ghostrain project, a sonic shade or ghost train is returned to the Everleigh Railway sheds which once sounded with the activity of locomotive cars shunting, blacksmiths forging steel, and railway workers, many of them migrants, conducting carriage repairs amidst lively workforce politics, where one of the rallying spots earned the moniker Red Square.

Acoustic ecology is a discipline which emerged in Vancouver, Canada, in the early 1970s. Its initial aim was to record existing soundscapes with a view to monitoring and possibly resisting the rise of sonic pollution as nature areas were encroached upon by urbanization, and cities in the thrall of globalisation began to sound alike with a thrum of undifferentiated white noise caused largely by cars and air-conditioning. In documenting the Vancouver soundscape, composers R.Murray Schafer and Hildegard Westercamp and their collaborators, identified some sounds unique to that city that were highly evocative of place, such as a foghorn at the entrance to the harbour, and an air horn that played O Canada several times a day in a public park. They called them soundmarks, just as distinctive in the local soundscape as landmarks are in a landscape. Such sounds are not only place markers but sometimes they become memorial markers of what has been lost from the soundscape and so from our worlds.

Composers and sound artists remain at the forefront of the acoustic ecology movement, along with acousticians and environmentalists, so it’s not surprising that a creative leap has occurred and that soundscape art and compositions are being made alongside scientific and historical recordings. Sound installations and composed soundscapes are floated in the air via radio broadcasts and in site specific spaces so that we might hear a series of sound portraits of cities like Lisbon, Buenos Aires, or Venice, or the laments of Irish dormitory girls consigned to laundry work. Sound is evanescent, ephemeral, but once captured in a recording it can have a powerful and poignant effect when replayed. We can become aware of the sonic traces of something that is changing or that has been and is no more. Sound is highly evocative and stirs the imagination. It can make us feel, reflect, think.

Nigel Helyer’s Australia Council-ABC Radio National residency project in 2008 was the first phase of Ghostrain, a collection of concise compelling portraits and oral histories of the Everleigh Carriageworks imagined as audio railway stations. It was broadcast as short audio features on Radio National’s Hindsight program in 2009, and disseminated also via podcast and on the social media site Pool (pool.org.au). The five sound rich episodes of Ghostrain used the oral histories recorded by Nigel Helyer with former Everleigh workers to paint a fascinating picture of a highly masculine work environment replete with ethnic tensions eased by pleasurable interactions around continental food. Architects and historians also spoke in the programs about the impressive industrial architecture and its creative adaptation to new uses. Nigel Helyer’s Ghostrain installation of a keynote sound of a steam train is contemporary art in its own right as well as a timely historical reminder.  It acknowledges the past use of Carriageworks, and also signals the reinvention of the majestic industrial space as art and performance space giving new life to an emerging cultural precinct in the Chippendale-Darlington locale.

This dynamic use of sound was also evident in the work of another ABC artist in residence, Robert Iolini, whose 2002 ABC work, The Sounds of Forgetting, incorporated ABC archival recordings into a radiophonic soundscape of Sydney lost to development. The title suggests a disturbing process of urban amnesia: when activities and places disappear, sounds disappear, and we can too easily forget.

Ghost trains suggest something that was that is no more. They suggest a morbid funfair ride on a train travelling through the dark out of which skeletons appear. But ghost trains are rarely seen, they are heard. It is the iconic sound of a train whistle coming around a bend or a steam engine starting out from a station and chuffing up to departure speed that most engages the imagination as with Nigel Helyer’s Ghostrain sounding through the air of Carriageworks.

Everybody has their train of thought. Mine is a childhood journey on the Silver City Comet from Broken Hill to Sydney, a journey that lasted a tedious day measured by the even rhythm of wheels clacking along the tracks and an evocative night ascent to Lithgow where a steam engine hauled us over the mountains with the majestic whistle blowing as we rounded the bends on our journey down to the coast. At Central’s terminus we were met by my grandmother and her railway worker friend Frankie in his spiffy dark cap and uniform. My grandmother, a tiny slip of a woman, was an industrial machinist and sewed upholstery for the Southern Aurora and other trains, out at Clyde. She lived at Lidcombe across from the railway station, and the sound of country and suburban trains stopping, starting and in transit lent a romance to our holiday nights. Those trains seemed magical to me, linking country to city with diverse freights of goods and people, and all the suburban parts of the city drawn to its heart. That main western line took us past a suburban and industrial landscape of flour silos and the massive Everleigh railways sheds and yards before the final run into the mysterious tunnels that led under the city centre.

Writing this makes me realise how much is gone, how much industrial activity has disappeared from Sydney, how many workers have disappeared from sight and sound, and how work and modes of transport have changed.

Robyn Ravlich, Executive Producer Music Unit, ABC Radio National, January 2010.

And if you still have energy here is the: -

GhosTrain ~ The Original Project Descriptor:

The Eveleigh site is impressive on a number of levels; its robust industrial architecture, the simple but effective re-purposing of the site as a cultural space; set against the lingering knowledge that this was a site of labour ~ of specialised knowledge and skill and of a lifestyle all but forgotten in Sydney’s upwardly mobile affluent society (well that’s a nice way of putting it!).

• The GhosTrain project will be developed in two phases with three principal outcomes, Radio Broadcasts, a Web presence and an Architectonic sound installation.

The first part of the ABC work will comprise of a period of research, with the purpose of generating an extensive sound-library.  This library will consist of material drawn from; local archival sources, the establishment of an oral history project with former workers and labour organisations at the Rail Yards, archival and direct recordings of Railway technologies (e.g. field recordings of trains and train operations). Additional content will be recorded on a series of contemporary railway journeys in Australia and the Asia Pacific area.

GhosTrain will develop an extensive Social Network primarily through the content generation phase of Archival Research and especially the Oral History project.  I envisage maintaining and developing local groups and encourage them to become involved with the subsequent web and installation aspects of the project.

Audioworks for Radio Broadcast:

The second part of the ABC project will be the composition and realisation of a series of short Radio broadcasts that deliver Audio-Portraits of the Redfern Locomotive & Eveliegh Carriage Works, its working histories and the technologies and experiences of Rail travel.  These short compositions will be designed to function as a series of broadcast ‘shorts’ and to be suitable as stand-alone PodCasts for a specially created GhosTrain website (also available to the ABC website).

This proposal seeks to developing this matrix of linkages into a web based platform that will further extend the potential for both research and growing social networks ~ in effect exposing a sector of the working public (ex Rail yard workers) to a creative, cultural process that would otherwise remain distant.

Soundsculpture Installation:

The ABC project will furnish material for a subsequent development proposed to The Performance Space and The Carriage Works as an interactive sound-sculpture installation, distributed throughout the Carriage Works allowing visitors to take a mobile unit and activate ‘sonic memories’.  This will be augmented by single daily keynote sound event (say at noon) in which a leitmotiv sound will pass momentarily along the axis of the foyer space ~ for example; a recording of a steam locomotive moving past a platform, a sort of sonic haunting lasting some 60 second only ~ a ghostly time marker!

The physical installation will comprise of up to 24 small Rail structures (sculptures) installed throughout the Carriage Works.  These ‘stations’ will be modelled upon fragments of viaducts, bridges, rail-heads etc ~ the salient point being that they will all include a short section of ‘track’.  I imagine each of these structures to be no more than 1.5m high, 1.5 wide and about 0.5m deep, they will be attached to walls or columns and made of Steel, Wood and Aluminium.

This ensemble of ‘stations’ will be fed by a live audio stream (from a x24 track hard-drive and x24 channels of amplification).  However, instead of running to speakers, the signal will terminate (silently) on the sections of track.

Visitors will be invited to take a small and slightly abstracted locomotive (these will be some 400mm in length rather like a ‘Lionel’ model train).  When placed upon any section of track the audio narrative will emanate from the speaker encased in the Locomotive’s body, thus visitors will actually ‘perform’ a journey to audit the work.

If no Locos were in-situ, then no sound will be heard in the building, alternatively if several were placed here and there, then an atmosphere of narratives and rail related soundscapes will inhabit the space.

Check out some GhosTrain material on POOL ]]> 2008-06-07T08:42:39+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/run_silent_run_deep/ Nigel has recently been an Artist in Residence at The Marine Mammal Laboratory (Tropical Marine Science Institute) of the National University of Singapore; developing a project for ISEA2008 exhibited at the National Museum of Singapore, July ~ August 2008. Interactive audio cartography, driving a 12.2 immersive speaker rig. Hydrophone location - Floating fish farm near Palau Ubin sound sculpture, environmental project, arts and science, interactive new media

Interface map

Catalogue Notes: The title is an ironic reference to the motto of submarine captains in WWII who knew that the silence of their craft was the key to remaining undetected. In contrast this artwork is a whole-hearted embrace of the richly sonic world deep within the ocean. The artist will be bringing this auditory world to the surface in an immersive surround-sound experience, which will be located within the gallery.

Prior to the exhibition, the artist will be creating an ‘audio portrait’ of Singapore harbour by recording underwater acoustics, running the gamut from sonar to whalesong. This library of sounds will then be ‘composed’ as a virtual cartographic environment which invites the visitor to navigate space and simultaneously create a dynamic 3 dimensional soundscape.

A (very) early morning reef-walk with a crew of Marine Biologists.

Narrow escape

This project employs the AudioNomad system to geo-spatially locate hydrophone recordings and other marine audio data, rendering this into a rich map-based composition that allows live ‘mixing’ in the form of Virtual marine journeys. AudioNomad is a collaborative Art + Science Research and development project between the artist (Sonic Objects: Sonic Architecture) and Dr Daniel Woo of the School of Computer Science and Engineering, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

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For more information go to the ISEA08 website. ]]> 2008-06-07T08:24:17+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/sculpture_in_the_vineyards/ public art, environmental project, arts and science A new work “Transformer” has been installed at the UnderCliff Vineyard in Wollembi alongside “Spinner” which remains in-situ from last year.

My approach to the sonic domain has always been informed by a Sculptor’s perspective which emphasises the experiential nature of sounds, linking them to the dynamic, material events that produce them and situating them within the environments that contain and propagate them.

“Transformer” would appear to disqualify itself from the definition of Sound-Sculpture by virtue of its apparent muteness.  The principal function of the work, however, is to manifest an aura; a low-energy electro-magnetic field, drawn from the atmosphere by the primitive antennae, which then flows through the coils that encircle the embalmed larvae.  These crude technical devices resonate in an infinitesimal manner and thus in it’s own way the work sings.

One of our principal oversights is to demand that nature exists only by virtue of our sense organs, like infants we carelessly assume that events that which we cannot perceive do not exist.  What the ear fails to hear is therefore mute.  Perhaps these are Sound-Sculptures which are simply inaudible! Visit the Gallery ]]> 2007-10-23T05:20:45+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/wa_marine_facility/ sound sculpture, public art, environmental project .

This commission for a new Marine facility at Henderson WA has recently been completed.  The work is comprised of three elements, a Video-projection work, a series of interactive biomorphic sculptures and an outdoor kinetic work, consisting of six counter-balanced needles which interact with the wind.

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Three years on, the landscaping has matured and the kinetic work is as installed.

View from the lounge of the Marine Centre.

Laser cut interactive units being installed.

Happy to see everything is still working well three years later!

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Stainless steel and Aluminium, wind sensitive sculpture with passive sonic elements.

Interior forms in laser cut acrylic and stainless steel, sensitive to movement.

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