Trouble in Paradise: Swelter - An Artists’ Project for the Palm House, Royal Botanic Gardens
May 1999 - January 2000, Sydney
by Michael Goldberg
Includes review of the Leaven project
Listening in Melissa McMahon bugs Nigel Helyer.
Nigel Helyer is an English-born, Sydney-based sound artist, lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, and co-founder of SoundCulture, a Pan-Pacfific organisation focusing on sound art. Helyer’s work is of an essentially composite, or in his words “pluridisciplinary”, character, in the sense that not only does any given piece incorporate a range of media, but many are part of a series of “events” (one or several?) including other pieces, other artists, other countries, radio broadcasts, internet links, CD’s, and CD-Roms.
Read More...
Exhibited.
Watch This Space, Alice Springs, 1996.
Materials.
Steel wrenches, Copper Antennae, Scientific Glassware, Grubs.
Dimensions
10m x 3m x 3m.
Read More...
Year; 1985.
Exhibited
AGNSW Perspecta
Materials
Triwall Cardboard, Velvet, Cast Iron
Dimensions
7m x 3m x 3.5m
Read More...
THE ARTIST
THE SOUND IN THIS SITE
It is ironic that the website of a Sound Artist contains very little audio material. This is, of course, intentional, the principal reasons being that I place a strong emphasis on the experience of a work in-situ, mediated as it is by the environmental context and the listening trajectory of the viewer/auditor. Secondly, the majority of these projects are multi-source environments, often operating with interactive or dynamic elements that are virtually impossible to represent as a linear stereo field.
A method I have adopted, that in some part overcomes such problems of Audio representation of complex sound installations, is to develop parallel Radiophonic projects. These Radio works are designed to give a general impression of the content and intention of the Installations whilst recognising the linear and more narrative form of stereo broadcast.
A range of ‘Sonic Archives’ may be ordered directly via this site for research and/or educational purposes.
SEARCH
MONTHLY ARCHIVES
RECENT ENTRIES
JOIN MAILING LIST
RANDOM QUOTES
“Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air”
Herman Melville in Moby Dick.