Melbourne Listening is an interactive installation by Susannah Williams and Warren Armstrong composed of touch responsive drawings, tapestries and cast objects, that house binaurally recorded sounds of spaces in and around Melbourne, which audience members will hear when they touch the work.
The sounds follow an imagined “day in the life” of the City of Melbourne, and will consist of soundscapes collected from a variety of locations in the wider Melbourne metropolitan area, combined with the stories of community members who live, work or play in those locations, or for whom those locations hold special significance.
From the dawn chorus at the Western Treatment Plant to penguins returning for the night at St Kilda; from crowds cheering at the AFLW to people protesting in the city; from the industry of rooftop beehives to the steady laps of night swimmers at a public pool; from a poet reciting her work on the street to a muezzin delivering the call to prayer in a mosque.
For the artists, the work is also something of an incomplete document of their first six months in a new city, listening to its spaces and inhabitants.
The installation will be exhibited at FortyFiveDownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne from August 28th – September 8th 2018.
Accompanying the installation will be a free, publicly available phone app for iPhone and Android. This app will offer those who are unable to attend the show an alternative way of accessing the content.
This work was recorded on the lands of the Wurrundjeri, Boonwurrung and Wathaurong people of the Kulin nation. The artists thus wish to pay respect to the elders of those peoples; past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded. These lands always were and always will be Aboriginal lands.
