For most of April and May 2011 I have been living in Cray fishing communities on the Houtman Abrohlos Islands which are situated some 60 ~ 100 km west of Geraldton in Western Australia.  The Abrohlos are the southernmost coral islands in the world and are home to a unique fishing industry which is struggling with issues of commercial enterprise within the context of environmental stewardship at a time of environmental and climatic change.  I shall be ‘following the catch’ researching the live crayfish trade as the critters are exported to Asia, visiting fish markets, auctions, and the kitchens and dining rooms in SW Asia.

And here an image from the CrayVox Atlas (come cookbook) contact me on sonique1@me.com for a copy of this limited edition. In the meanwhile here are some extracts from my diary…...

Atoll.

The Island, a cemetery exhaled by the sea. The tree of life, calcinated to a bleached white clinker raft. Whilst all around, submerged beneath the endless sheet of water Fronds branch and entwine, filament and fan, knoll and star Electric pink jostles acid green, fading to sombre blue where the sharks sleep

Stone.

A stone shown as a curio for there are no stones on this island, only coral, loose brittle and resonant, bearing the imprint of life that thrives in the waters hard by the strand. Skimming over acres of it en route to nearby Basilli Island, named for a family of Italian fishermen, or perhaps they are named for the Island, with lives and livelihoods so entwined with place it is hard to tell. In the cul de sac of a cement path named Cathedral Street stands a miniature catholic church, furnished with a neat array of small wooden school chairs, a series of ceramic tiles which illustrate the stations of the cross and two Madonnas, one a faded, framed print on the Altar, the other a plaster statuette balancing on a corner shelf; both gaze at wilted candles, a testament to passion past.

Basili is all neatness, it’s shacks painted in electric rainbow colours, the floats and ropes ordered as if by the compulsions of a Mediterranean matriarch with little else to do in a sleepy coastal village. The rock, likewise a transposition, arriving as ballast on a sailing vessel, which either floundered here or jettisoned this lode in lieu of a cargo, lies alongside a whale vertebrae and pearl nacre, a conduit to other worlds.

Wednesday April 6th, Post Office Island.

Today clouds, a light breeze and another very high tide.  The crew are out cleaning the Pearl Lines with the small boat and a high pressure water jet.  I commandeer the runabout and drift about the islands trolling with a hydrophone for underwater soundscapes (mostly snapping shrimp and the occasional grunter) and takes some images of the coral heads that almost scrape the hull of the boat.

Later in the afternoon we all pile aboard the bigger jet-boat and head North to Big Rat Island to pick up a visitor at the airstrip.  We are making 20 knots with our 370 horsepower diesel powered jet, somewhat like a seaplane on the verge of lift-off, we simply lack wings.  It’s a fast, rough and very wet ride and I make a discovery, cold beer really does settle the stomach!

El Halcedor.

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography reached such a Perfection, that the map of one single Province covered a whole Town.  With time, these excessive Maps ceased to give satisfaction, and the Colleges of Cartography drew up a Map of the Empire which was done to the same scale as the Empire itself, and which coincided with it at every point.  Less absorbed in the study of Cartography, the following generations came to conclude that this vast Map was useless and not without Impiety, abandoned it to the inclemencies of the Sun and Winters.  In the deserts of the West, there survive shattered Ruins of the Map, inhabited by Beasts and by Beggars; in all the Land, no other relic of the Cartographic Disciplines remains.

Jorge Luis Borges.

2up

It has been a week of constant movement, travelling from one Island to the next, on and off boats and light planes; tramping over different terrains. I am beginning to get a feel for the patterns, the biology and the various social networks ~ starting to grasp the complexity of the Cray industry, not simply the almost Baroque ecology of the of the Crayfish itself but also the labyrinthine attempts to regulate and maintain a sustainable fishery.

On Little Rat I sleep in a small cabin at the end of the wharf which rocks and moans in the high winds, I fret that I will be swept away!  On West Wallabi I encounter a minefield of Mutton Bird burrows (the favourite food of Sea Eagles) and spend half my trek falling over into thorny bushes.  We attend the ANZAC dawn service and then join in the 2up which attracts boats from all the other islands ~ free beer and burning sunshine equals sore heads!  On North Island I discover a village like atmosphere full of friends and family, small kids catching gigantic fish on the pontoons.

Qui Gung, the Cray position.

I looked across to the outer Islands and studied the breakers heaving themselves onto the coral ridges of the seaward side; I listened to the wind hissing through the structures on the jetty and I drew in the odour of diesel fuel mixed with Cray-bait.  Downing two sea-sickness tablets I hauled my gear onboard the laden Crayboat and tried to keep out of the way as the skipper and deckle manoeuvred the crates into position and hooked up the water hoses to irrigate the live catch.  The skipper descended for the flying bridge as soon as we were through the shoals and slammed the throttle full forward sending us hurtling into a two metre seaway.  For the next three hours I hung in a Qui Gung like pose behind the wheelhouse, knees bent to absorb the pounding, hands firmly gripping the rail and eyes fixed alternatively on the horizon and the ETA readout on the GPS map which gradually counted down to the shore, to solidity and dryness.

Exoskeleton.

The more I see of them and observe their behaviour, the more they remind me of cockroaches - an ever present thought at supper time.  Just what was that one thinking as the deckhand jokingly said “hey Nigel that one’s having a really good look at you.” Hoisting itself out of the sorting bin and purposefully fixing me with its two protruding pearls of eyes, antennae and feelers symmetrically arranged to keep me at bay and moving a generous array of small underbody parts.  What constitutes thought?

This creature is supposedly possessed of a ‘simple’ brain, a clot of neves lodged beneath the horned carapace that protects the eyes, surely it must be taxed just coordinating all these whirring body parts, all of those legs and feelers, unless of course they are mostly autonomous. So what constitutes thought?

Aliens, who needs aliens, our world is chocked with them, and doesn’t Geiger and Hollywood know it, being content to go no further than a simple mix and match; Crustacea and Insecta with a little help from Reptilia on occasion.

Of course from the perspective of numbers, of Biomass it is we who are the ‘fish out of water’ with our rather simplistic morphologies, our vulnerable soft tissue hung from frames of bone and lacking the useful ability to regenerate limbs. Perhaps the notion of intelligence has gone to our heads!

You have to catch a Sprat to catch a Mackerel

The two small children cut pieces of Octopus tentacle and bait their hooks -  within seconds another reef fish has impulsively impaled itself and the kids haul the parti-coloured victim onto the wharf where the line is disgorged and the creature is stilled with the point of a fillet knife.

A short ride across the main channel and we tie up at a small wharf that announces Coronation Atoll.  Yet another coral rubble island with a scattering of mostly sealed up fisherman’s camps and a Pearl operation on the western point.

This atoll however is bisected by deep crevasses that suggest it is in the process of a slow disintegration as the sea percolates, invades and reclaims this semblance of terra firma.  It is to one of these crevasses that we are bound, fish at the ready.  We gaze down into a deep clear pool overhung by cantilevers of friable coral and there below cruise two enormous grey cod which have been imprisoned here for years.  As soon as the children throw the first fish the pool churns as the cod rush to the surface, inhaling the offering whole - the waters still as the grey forms slide, attentive, like submarines from Holy Loch on red alert.

Clambering down into the crevice I wedge myself, semi-immersed in the pool, underwater camera thrust forward to get a clear view of the business end of the giant cod.  As it approaches I begin to wonder how hungry it actually is, how fast it can move and how fast I can move but I guess it could always swallow the camera before tackling me!

Yellow Submarine

Back onshore for a few days R+R and R+D.  Having a yarn with some of the ‘old-timers’ (yarning being their speciality) and looking at the ‘industrial’ end of the operation.  The ‘Yellow Submarine’ was a prototype submersible launched in 1969 as a harvester equipped with mechanical arms to literally ‘pick-up’ Crayfish.  It failed due to toxic gas build up ~ otherwise the Abrolhos would now look like a NATO navy base!

The holding tanks at the Geraldton Fishermans Coop are currently retaining 40,000 Kilos of live Crays, thats a big dinner party and an even bigger bill at the end of the evening!

Fast food.

The cult of Taylorism has never touched this industry, no time and motion men have slid about on the heaving decks of a Cray boat, they would be superfluous, the job’s been done over decades of practice.

The skipper’s gaze flickers between the dots on the GPS screen and the waves ahead, fingers glancing the throttle and wheel.  The vessel hauls up to the float, the grapple swings in and the line is passed to the deckhand who winds it onto the winch.  The skipper flips the pot onto the tipper and halts the winch as the Crays tumble into the sorting bin.  The skipper opens the two bait lids and slides the pot down the rail -  the deckhand removes the remains of the bait, loads new bait and slides the pot down the rail to stack along with it’s coiled rope and float, ready to set.

All this takes a few seconds, a choreography practiced on a stage which dances and rolls with the swell, repeated over and over, day after day - time and tide wait for no man and time is money.

At each pull the Crays are sorted, size, gender, legs and feelers - the rejects flying overboard to thankfully dig their tails in hard and propel themselves to safety.  All the while my interest has been steadily slipping from the routine on board to the three sinister forms that have been gliding beneath the hull for the past hours, following our every move, waiting for Crayfish to parachute in front of their snouts.  This is my rationale for not swimming around here, sleek three metre Bronze Whalers with large grins and a taste for snack food!

The HydroLab.

My island circuit is completed by this return trip to the Southern Group and the shack on Post Office Island, after my meander northwards through the entire Houtman Abrolhos.  Once again on familiar ground, this time accompanied by Artemis Kitsios, a colleague from the city who brings a HydroLab able to test the quality of the water; Oxygen, Salinity, Turbidity, Chlorophyll you name it!

We find that this new activity makes everyone a bit nervous as this is the type of research that the Fisheries Department like to pursue but I reassure all that we meet that our data will only be used to create soundscapes, a partly satisfactory and partly mystifying explanation.  In short order I also struggle to explain Biennales, arts funding in general, and finish with a precis of Sound Sculpture.

We make a tour of the Island, noting the various environmental niches, the deep water wharves, the tidal sinkholes, the lagoon and the mangroves.  The sensor probe is lowered at each site and as Artemis tackles the hideous interface of the data-logger I drop my hydrophone into the water and listen to the micro-chatter of tiny crustaceans and other coral dwellers who occasionally investigate the hydrophone by gently drumming a tattoo on it’s surface.

I stand motionless, entranced in the stellar static of shrimp clicks, the soft grunts and coughs of fish and the zipping of Crayfish antennae, oblivious to the shrieks of gulls that skim menacingly over my head.

Snake Alley

A fine specimen gazing out from its glass tank, antennae sweeping through the stream of bubbles surging to the surface; unwitting traveler a world away from the reefy crevices of the Indian Ocean.  Airlifted in a deep coma like some business class passenger, prostrate on an overnight long-haul.  Revived to Crayfish consciousness in a cavernous Koahsiung seafood import warehouse; then by refrigerated truck to the back alleys of a Taipei night-market.

The feelers sweep again, no takers tonight, a reprieve from the boiling ocean of the cauldron.  Next door a man downs a shot glass of snake venom mixed with blood as the chef grills the doomed reptile ~ I’m thinking that Tofu will suit me fine tonight!

Street stall

We are walking slowly along the coastal strip, a seaside park of giant crab sculptures and power boxes painted with cartoon fish.  This isthmus wedged between an uninviting grey sand beach and a grimy container port supports a honky-tonk terrain of seafood joints and market stalls overflowing with dried cuttlefish, whitebait, sea cucumbers and other unidentifiable marine lifeforms.

The cook takes the initiative, throwing the two small crayfish onto the brass pan of the scales, $400 NT he declares.  I counter his opening gambit by declaring they are too young to die ~ my translator doesn’t get it but we manage to escape.  Juveniles I explain, keep catching those and there won’t be any left in three years.  Ah, only caught by accident with other fish, she explains with authority ~ One has to be very purposeful to catch crayfish, I reply with a polite smile.

Auction

Everyone here has three things in common, gum boots, a wooden stick tipped with an iron hook and an electrical remote that sends dealer codes to the digital auction system ~ of course everyone also stinks of fish and has been up since the wee hours.

The auctioneers, wedged into their narrow catwalks, hemmed in by worn stainless steel rails push their little chariots with grimy laptops and damp papers to and fro as they move along the catch displayed below.  On the left wrist an ink-pad used with alarming speed to stamp hardcopy transactions thrust toward them by the buyers at the close of each tirade of incomprehensible muttering.

Some have a minder, gesticulating wildly and grunting abruptly as an accompaniment to the rhythms of the auctioneer, a fishy courting ritual that flows and ebbs, pausing whilst the giant data screens reset to zero after each bid, only to escalate as the action resumes. The bidders mill and nod, all the while jostling one another to peer at the lots, hauling crates over the slippery floor with their metal-shod sticks.  This shoal, this pod, this school of bidders flows around me, buffeting my recording equipment, the mike boom a surrogate fishing rod cast above a sea of heads.

Wasteful

Not to be taken lightly ~ food!  He is Haka, weather beaten, close cropped hair, sparkling eyes.  He leans towards the microphone perching on the edge of his seat, animated by the topic, savouring the memories of eating a crayfish banquet at his cousins wedding. He lick his lips, the best is Japanese style, no spices just fresh, sashimi and with the crayfish head displayed on the dish - this way he can worship his food.

He talks of catching Taiwanese crayfish on the rugged east coast, small but sweet - unlike those he ate in Sydney and Brisbane, huge portions one tail for each person and the flesh cooked with a sauce ~ yes tasty but so wasteful, it troubled him!  In Taiwan everything is used, we are ashamed of waste, people here still remember being poor and hungry - we don’t waste anything at all.

]]> 2011-05-27T08:29:26+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/weeping_willow/ sound sculpture, social history, Sculpture Weeping Willow is a twelve channel audio sculpture currently on exhibition in Istanbul as part of ISEA 2011 ~ and here is a link to my individual page.

The work is presented as an interactive audio sculpture in the form of a dinner table set with twelve Willow Pattern plates.  Each plate is treated to show only a fragment of the original pattern, in such a manner that the entire set combines to form the complete image.  In turn each plate is mounted on a Solid Drive audio actuator rendering it in effect as a speaker allowing the dinner setting to manifest a multichannel, fragmentary audio narrative.

x12 channels driven by audio actuators ~ each plate becomes a speaker.

“And truly a trip on this Lake is a much more charming recreation than can be enjoyed on land. For on the one side lies the city in its entire length, so that the spectators in the barges, from the distance at which they stand, take in the whole prospect in its full beauty and grandeur, with its numberless palaces, temples, monasteries, and gardens, full of lofty trees, sloping to the shore.

And the Lake is never without a number of other such boats, laden with pleasure parties; for it is the great delight of the citizens here, after they have disposed of the day’s business, to pass the afternoon in enjoyment with the ladies of their families, or perhaps with others less reputable, either in these barges or in driving about the city in carriages.”

Marco Polo

Each plate has an individual glaze fragment.

The Weeping Willow project addresses the cultural and ideological relationship between two Empires, Britannia and Cathay (China) both of which regarded themselves as the hub of the Universe.  Eurocentrism demands that the Orient play a secondary role in the Arts and Sciences, obscuring the real source of much Occidental Ars et Inventio by relegating the Orient to the source of exotica, myth and superstition.

Yang Ping the project assistant and interpreter in HangZhou 2010.

View of the calligraphic map of the West Lake in HangZhou.

Underpinned by a long history of trade routes and sea-lanes the two imperial centres engaged in a curious but problematic dialogue which ended ultimately in the Opium wars and semi-colonisation by European powers in the mid nineteenth century, establishing an axis of power which we are only now seeing reversed!

HangZhou resident who contributed a poem to the soundscape.

European commercial interests were matched at every turn by a fascination with Eastern Arts and Culture, the complexity and historical depth of which predated and overshadowed that of Europe.  Textile and Ceramic wares in particular formed the basis for huge trade, carrying with it a range of iconography which shuffled across the cultural divide, to eventually hybridise in both the Occident and the Orient.

Weeping Willow in the Gallery at Taksim, Istanbul.

The Blue Willow, or Willow Pattern ceramic design is a perfect example of this process and forms the basis for the current work Weeping Willow.  Blue Willow was designed by Minton, an Englishman and the design was initially produced by the Spode pottery in Staffordshire.  The design is based upon the longstanding tradition of Ming porcelain blue-ware, with specific imagery drawn from the lakes and gardens in HangZhou, notably the West Lake which has a deep-rooted and popular place in Chinese cultural history and which is well documented in the Travels of Marco Polo. 

Detail of the glaze ‘fragment.’

John the Sandblaster in Wollongong

The European image proposes a narrative, reputed to  be based upon a traditional Chinese tale of unrequited love, very much in the vein of Romeo and Juliette but is in fact essentially a European fiction, which only loosely follows a much more interesting mythic tale relating a love story between white and blue snake deities.  

Nigel listening.

The vagaries of orientalism aside, to judge from the  ubiquity of the design Blue Willow is possibly the most widespread example of Chinoiserie ever produced, with production quickly being taken up in China and Japan as exports to Europe reversing the original orientalist trend.  Even today Wedgewood’s Blue Willow plates are manufactured in China by workers to whom the pattern is apparently without meaning.

Small pavilion on West Lake, HangZhou.

The current Weeping Willow project explores the vestiges of cultural memory invested in the design by asking locals in the Hangzhou area to identify and describe the stories embedded in the Blue Willow plate.  These narratives are combined with narrations of the original love stories, both traditional and European (with translations undertaken in studio) and in turn mixed with early European accounts of China (for example Marco Polo’s descriptions of exotic life in HangZhou, which he identifies as Kinsay).

HangZhou interviewee.

HangZhou interviewee.

HangZhou interviewee.

HangZhou interviewee.

HangZhou interviewee.

]]> 2011-09-20T14:35:45+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/voxaura/ VoxAura; The River Sings.

This is the VoxAura; The River Sings project which opened on August 4th 2011 as part of the Turku is Listening programme during the Turku 2011, European Capital of Culture.

Download the local information here.

voxaura_esite2.pdf

Our blood has the same salinity as the Ocean, a reminder of the origin of all life on the planet and a warning that we share our well being with our vast and indifferent mother.

As terrestrial dwellers it is easy to overlook the fact that we inhabit an essentially two dimensional space which has surface area but scant depth.

By contrast the marine world is three dimensional, it’s depths accounting for 99% of the Biosphere and it’s surface accounting for 70% of the planets area. The ocean forms the principal inter-face for chemical exchange with the atmosphere, absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen - it is the pump that drives climate and regulates the air we breath.

Preparing the audio masts on-board the lifeboats, courtesy the MS Bore.

Like other semi-enclosed bodies of water, the Baltic is brackish, it’s waters less saline than our tears. The River Aura flows through the port city of Turku, past the maze of low granite islands that form the Finnish archipelago and into the Baltic, carrying with it a mixture of chemical nutrients and effluents that simultaneously drive the annual algal bloom and degrade the complexity and fecundity of marine ecosystems. Put simply the Baltic has lost it’s clarity and it’s fish but has gained the reputation as the most polluted sea in the world.

VoxAura; the River Sings suggests that we pay attention to these complex issues that ultimately control our destiny by listening to the chemical composition of the Baltic.

The River Aura, Turku from the LifeBoat deck of the MS. Bore.

The project consists of two vessels, moored either side of Turku’s Theatre Bridge, equipped with speakers which broadcast a soundscape.

The first of these plays material from a large archive of sound recordings which evoke the maritime traditions and marine environment of the Baltic; whilst the second transforms this material, allowing us to ‘listen’ to water quality data that is constantly collected by two trans-Baltic ships and downloaded to the work.

Preparing to launch the two lifeboats and deliver to the installation site.

The project’s computer system takes variables from this data, such as position, depth, temperature, salinity, turbidity and pH, using them as musical parameters to transform the source audio (which is playing simultaneously on the first vessel) producing an ethereal ‘datamusic” as a metaphor for, or analogue of the chemical composition of the sea.

Water Quality data sample.

The project is accompanied by a CD sampler, tracks of which are available here.

Listen to a stereo sample from the VoxAura project sampler CD, track_01

Listen to a stereo sample from the VoxAura project sampler CD, track_02

Listen to a stereo sample from the VoxAura project sampler CD, track_03

Listen to a stereo sample from the VoxAura project sampler CD, track_04

The audio CD is a sampler of the VoxAura, the River Sings project which is part of Turku is Listening a series curated and produced by Simo and Tuike Alitalo during Turku 2011 European Capital of Culture.

The project was conceived and realised by Dr. Nigel Helyer with the collaboration of Dr. Jon Drummond who developed the audio engine and the technical system design.

Many thanks to Timo O Nenonen for his on-site installation work, to Seppo Kaitala and the Finnish Environment institute: Marine Research Centre for providing the water quality data from the M/S Finnmaid & M/S TransPaper and to all those who contributed their voice or sounds, especially to Arno Virtanen, the Turku Shanty Singers and all the crew at the Titanik Gallery. Last but not least a big thank-you to Jonny and Sebastien of the M.S. Bore who offered their bright orange LifeBoats.

All recordings copyright Dr. Nigel Helyer (aka Dr. Sonique) of Sonic Objects; Sonic Architecture.  CD sound design by Dr. Jon Drummond.

And some recent images of the project in-situ.

Download the local information here.

voxaura_esite2.pdf]]> 2011-07-31T14:25:06+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/bio_logging/ environmental project, arts and science, interactive new media Bio_Logging is a collaboration between Artist Dr Nigel Helyer and Dr Mary-Ann Lea of the Institue for Marine and Antarctic Studies (University of Tasmania, Hobart) which seeks to link scientific bio-logging and GIS techniques with the Artist’s interests in interactive acoustic cartography and the development of Audio-Portraits which extend the conceptual and intuitive grasp of otherwise abstract data.

Kerguelen Islands

The Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) has supported this residency which will be structured around a series of four one month intensive work periods allowing the collaboration to involve a range of research activities and associated technologies.

Screenshot from the interactive sonic cartography.

The artist will participate in the working life of the lab, joining field trips to make (for example) hydrophone and ambient recordings as well as water quality measurements and visual documents.

Heard Island

We envisage that each of the four sessions will comprise a ten day field trip where the Artist will work directly with a Scientific survey team, followed by a twenty day period in the Hobart lab working with the collected data and developing this into interactive works.

Kerguelen and Heard, satellite image.

The images show Bio_Logging Beta exhibited in Hobart February 2011 as part of the CSIRO International Bio_Logging Conference.  This work in progress, sonifies satellite tracked bio data from the Sub-Antarctic and layers this into an interactive map interface which can be explored, mixing the layered audio in real-time.

]]> 2011-05-03T11:03:41+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/radiolarians/ RadioLarians new public artwork for the Lake MacQuarie City Gallery, installed February 2011.

Radiolarians consists of two interlocked sculptures, laser cut in 6mm Corten steel. The forms, one cylindrical and the other toroidal have a strong morphological relationship to microscopic marine creatures, sharing symmetry with the structure of primitive Radiolaria, countless millions of which form the geological strata of this, the oldest continent.

My interest in the symmetry and morphology of microscopic marine organisms is long standing and issues not only from their stunning and complex beauty, evolved in the zero gravity conditions of the oceans, but also from my fascination with the history of BioSciences and in particular the work of eminent German biologist and zoologist Ernst t Haeckel(1834–1919) who in 1904 published “Kunstformen der Natur” (Art Forms in Nature).

Haekel was the principal exponent of Darwinism in the German speaking world and passionately interested in Goethe’s new discipline of Morphology. From my sculptors perspective there can be little more interesting than morphology; once again this topic is enshrined in the work of the Scottish polymath D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson who in 1917 published “On Growth and Form” which well before the discovery of the genetic code, advocated the understanding of morphology and growth in the light of mathematics and physics.

Original 3D visualisation of Radiolarians.

All we got wrong in the above was the colour of the grass!

The current work is somewhat of a departure from the previous series which made of glassy acrylic are intended for controlled indoor environments and which frequently enfold delicate (and erratic) Theremin circuits, interactive sound instruments that react to human proximity and which therefore seem to have a basic sentience.

At the factory (Dolans).

At the factory (Dolans).

Final installation.

]]> 2011-04-17T08:28:53+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/new_host_v6/ arts and science, Sculpture Somewhat to my surprise Host has been going through manifold iterations.  Ironically the work has now been show in various forms at six international venues but has never been exhibited in Australia ~ oh well, see what you have been missing!

There are technical details on the original Host page so here is a little story to accompany some new images of Host at the science Gallery of Trinity College Dublin, Eire as part of Visceral the 10th anniversary exhibition of the SynbioticA lab UWA.

Photo Patrick Bolger

The old Professor and I are scrambling about in the bush armed with ultra-sonic bat detectors, only we are using them to track down crickets.  The bat detectors down-sample high frequencies into the audible range but the Prof is slightly alarmed that I can hear the critters without the aid of the detector, mark one up for “Golden Ears” I guess!

Photo Patrick Bolger

Photo Patrick Bolger

The two senior scientists tell me this is a piece of cake, in fact it was a standard lab demonstration before students got all PC and squeamish, so they are a little out of practice!    It turns out to be a messy operation affixing a live ‘subject’ to the experimental stand with hot wax, the cricket is uncooperative, the scientists swear like troopers but persevere.  Insects they tell me fall outside of ethics requirements as they have no feelings (do they mean souls I wonder?).

Crickets hear through their ‘elbows’ the sound traveling inside the upper forelimb to a membrane that excites nerves connected to the aural nerve centre in the thorax.   This is where the first micro electrode is inserted, the circuit being completed by another in the abdomen; the cricket is hooked up to an oscilloscope and is thus transformed into a microphone!

Photo Patrick Bolger

On comes the lecture, a racy monologue concerning the exotic sexual practices of insects,  hard-core fetish pales into insignificance compared with these antics.   The oscilloscope flashes and pulses as the cricket’s aural nerves fire, re-set and fire again.  In the lab we settle back to drink tea and listen along with our insect friend who performs diligently for four hours before expiring.   At this juncture I feel more than just a twinge of remorse for this small death, notwithstanding the fact that we daily execute insects by the million (I rationalise) entire industries serve this single exterminating purpose, ensuring our hygiene and our food security.

I console myself that “Host” is something of an insect liberation project, as the 200 ~ 300 members of the live cricket audience are saved from certain doom (they are purchased from pet stores, where their destiny is to be eaten by pet amphibians and reptiles). After serving as a (captive) audience for a week, by which time they will have listened to the sex lecture some 150 times, the crickets are released and a fresh cohort installed. I only hope that in the brief time they have left they can do something useful with all that knowledge!

Like a hapless insect embroidered into the corner of a spiders web I am reversed into the corner of the tiny market stall and positioned on a small yellow plastic stool.  The dealers have me where they want me, a fine exotic catch, I can only escape through negotiating the best deal possible even though I will pay through the nose!  We sit smiling and sweating in the Shanghai summer, talking numbers, poking calculators and smiling again - all around a cacophony of cricket stridulations.   Men are obsessively filling miniature ming dishes with cricket sized portions of gruel, transferring prized Katydids from earthenware jars to fancy carved wooden cages, or cocking an ear to a song.

Photo Patrick Bolger

Face saved all round and I walk away with some exquisitely fret-worked pocket cricket cages, a small organic transistor radio really, content in the knowledge that in China crickets have a soul! ]]> 2011-04-17T07:56:26+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/law_of_the_tongue/     sound sculpture, Installation The Law of the Tongue ~ or the Sonic Whale.

He who fights the monster should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster.  And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze into thee.

Frederick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

The Sea and superstition go hand in hand. For centuries sailors unwittingly sensing the song of the Whale through their wooden hulled ships thought them Ghosts of the deep and despite the thousands of close encounters in the Whale hunt they remained ‘mute’ until the middle of the C20th. 

It was a team of US military sonar operators based in Bermuda, charged with identifying Russian submarines who initially identified and documented the singing of whales thus enabling the entire debate about their sentience.  The Song of the Humpback Whale (produced by the biologist Dr. Roger Payne) was released as an L.P. Record in 1970 (and subsequently re-released as a soundsheet in National Geographic’s January 1979 edition selling 10.5 million copies making it the most popular commercial recording of all time and instrumental in turning public awareness against the cruelty and avarice of the Whaling Industry.

The song of the Humpback is currently whirling through space, broadcast from the Voyager I and Voyager II spacecraft for the delight and entertainment of all alien beings, but sadly it’s cousin the Sperm Whale still provides lubrication for craft such as the Hubble telescope, Cetacean DNA evaporating into the Cosmos.

For better or worse Whales are sonic beings, both served and imperiled by sound.  In 1946 the British equipped a postwar generation of Whale ships with military submarine detection sonar to locate Whales and then employed ultrasonic ‘nets’ to entrap their prey.

The militarisation of the Whale’s sonic world continues with the current legal battle concerning the US Military encroachment of the Deep Channel strata of the Oceans, using them for mid and low frequency active sonar detection, but with lethal consequences for Whales.  The US court has recently upheld the Military’s right to deploy such low frequency systems despite conclusive evidence that demonstrates the signals resonate the internal ear of Whales destroying their hearing and depriving them of their ability to navigate, resulting in many standings and deaths.(1)

However the final irony is surely reserved for the Japanese whalers, those factory ships are deploying a US Military technology, LRAD arrays (Long Range Acoustic Devices) as sonic weapons against the anti-whaling activists onboard the Sea Shepherd, intended to cause nausea, distress and hearing damage amongst the activist crew.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

Sound mixes.
The Law of the Tongue installation operates with eight parallel audio tracks, six driving Solid Drive audio actuators that activate the skeletal vessel, and three ship’s oars, the remaining two tracks drive two large sub-woofers buried in the three metre long neoprene ‘Whale’s Tongue’.  click below to listen to fragments samples from the sound library ~ naturally these are simple stereo mixes and not actual tracks from the installation but give a good idea of the sonic content which is drawn principally from sonified water quality data, whale recordings and hydrophone recordings.

Download “The Law of the Tongue”, track # 1

Download “The Law of the Tongue”, track # 1

Download “The Law of the Tongue”, track # 1

The Law of the Tongue ~ Symbiosis and Betrayal.

For Millennia, Killer Whales (Orcinus Orca) have hunted Baleen Whales along the coasts of Australia, driving them into shallow bays from which they cannot escape.  Likewise for Millennia the Yuni people of Twofold Bay near Eden (New South Wales) have formed a spiritual bond with the Orcas (Beowas to the Yuni) whom they considered to be reincarnations of their tribal ancestors and whom they sang; believing that the Orcas responded by intentionally driving Whales to strand in the Bay as a food offering to their tribal members.

Each year for more than a century at Eden on Australia’s far south east coast, a pod of Orcas formed a collaborative Whale hunting venture with the Davidsons, a family who practiced subsistence level Cultural Whaling this symbiosis endured for over 100 years.

Members of the Orca pod would swim right into the mouth of the Kiah River where the Davidsons had their two isolated houses on the opposite side of the bay from the township of Eden. They would then noisily breach or tail-lob (or flop-tail as the Davidsons called it) until the whalers emerged and rowed their frail open boats out to meet them.   On cloudy or moonless nights, the Davidson crews would follow the glowing bioluminescent trails of the Orcas, lighting up the sea.  

After guiding the crews to the Whale the Orcas would harry the prey, driving it toward shallow water and once the harpoon struck they preventing it from sounding (diving) often by gripping the harpoon line with their teeth.  Finally, when the exhausted victim was lanced and inert the Davidson crew would simply tag the carcass with a small anchor and buoy and row home.  As is habitual, the Orcas only ate the tongue and lips discarding the rest.

Within a day or two the carcass would gas-up and float to the surface permitting the whalers to row out and tow the remains to the beachside try works at their small whaling station on the banks of the Kiah River in Twofold Bay.  The Davidson called this interspecies contract with the Orcas The Law of the Tongue.

So close was this relationship that the whale crews would ensure the safety of the Orcas, releasing them from hazards such as net entanglements and likewise the Orcas protected crews from shark attack in the frequent accidents where boat were smashed in the chase.

This arrangement flourished until two of the Orca pod beached and a vagrant named Harry Silks knifed them to death. Silks had to be escorted from Eden by the Police for his own safety as the Davidson crews, European and Aboriginal alike where out for his blood.  This scene was witnessed by the Orcas who vacated the bay for the remainder of the season, with only a few returning the following year ~ the bond of trust with humans had been broken.

Simultaneously Norwegian Whalers operating from Jervis Bay established a deliberate campaign to shoot Orcas, whom they mistakenly viewed as competition, further decimating the local Orca population.  Old Tom the sole survivor of the Eden pod died in 1930, a full 20 years before the onset of industrial scale whaling for Humpbacks in Australia.  Old Tom’s skeleton is preserved in Eden which still shows the grooves worn away in his teeth; a result of his attempts to brake the escape of many a Humpback.

For thou didst cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the flood was round about me;
All thy waves and billows passed over me.

Jonah 2:3

(1)
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/overview/ Interim_Bahamas_Report.pdf


© Dr. Nigel Helyer, Sydney June 2010.

3D model, Cylinder form_01.

3D model, Torus form_01.

Notebook sketch.

Cylinder form_02 under construction at GOMA.

Cylinder form_01 detail.

Installation detail, GOMA.

Installation detail, GOMA.

Zoe interacts.

Nigel’s floortalk at the Asian Art Biennale.

Curators at play.

National Museum of Fine Art, Taichung, Taiwan.

]]> 2010-08-31T04:18:49+00:00 http://www.sonicobjects.com/index.php/weblog/padme/ sound sculpture, public art, environmental project Messing about in boats and Padme at MacQuarie University 2010.

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.

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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.”

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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]]> 2009-09-07T09:59:39+00:00