Image description: A point source creates a field over another more textured field whose ragged flecks and patches suggest a rough surface with brown and turquoise hues. An abstracted sound layer from textures collected from the artists travels. Image by Tim Humphrey.
Free event.
All ages welcome.
Live AI captioning.
As an alternative to the 11am presser, Listening Club is a no-stress, low-participation experience that offers a moment to unlink from the visual.
Listening Club invites you to eavesdrop on an audio encounter with people working in very different spheres. Dipping into both the overlapping and contrasting meanings of sound for each.
In a culture increasingly defined by the visual, what does listening mean today? Does our sonic environment affect us in unconscious ways, and do we hear more than we realise? Refresh your ears with this playful playlist of words and sounds.
Led by the inimitable Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, the Listening Club series consists of three instalments in which different artists and scientists come together to see what alchemy results for the listener. Their offerings might be meandering or urgent, contemplative or fast-paced – we want to know what surprises unfold when strangers explore common territory for the first time.’
Take a listen!
Wed 22 September 11 to 11.30am with artist Lou Bennett and scientist Johanne Trippas.
Yorta Yorta / Dja Dja Wurrung woman, Dr Lou Bennett is a former member of the internationally acclaimed music trio Tiddas. She is a consummate performer, playing to audiences worldwide. Lou is the McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her work investigates the obstacles and ethical issues related to retrieving and transmitting Aboriginal languages cross-culturally and over generations.
Johanne Trippas is a Doreen Thomas Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from RMIT University. Her research sits at the intersection of information retrieval, conversational systems and human-computer interaction to focus on how these systems can satisfy our informational needs.
Images courtesy of the artist from Jaara Nyilamum Anthology and Johanne Trippas.
Wed 29 Sept 11 to 11.30am with artist Victoria Pham and scientist Helena Bender.
Victoria Pham is an installation artist, composer, evolutionary biologist and PhD Candidate in Biological Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her work focuses on the evolution of music, exploring the connections between second-hand memory, modes of decolonisation, communal storytelling and ecological expressions of construction.
Dr Helena Bender is a behavioural ecologist interested in the use of sound in interactions. Her early research investigated sounds produced by coral reef fish and their accompanying behaviours. She currently explores how sound can be used to manage eastern grey kangaroos in agricultural and road contexts, as well as the research practices used in ecological systems. Her research recognises that systems cannot be isolated as either social or ecological because they are interdependent and entangled.
Images courtesy of Victoria Pham and Helena Bender.
Wed 6 October 11 to 11.30am with artist Bridget Chappell and scientist Raoul Mulder.
Bridget Chappell is an artist who makes, codes, and DJs as Hextape. They create data-driven sound installations ranging from 3D interactive electromagnetic fields to sonifications of colonisation and pirate radio stations. They are the founder of the award-winning program Sound School that works to centre marginalised voices in media arts and make experimental sound technologies to challenge police sirens and State sonic weapons.
Professor Raoul Mulder is an ecologist who studies bird behaviour, particularly social behaviour: the myriad ways in which animals interact with each other from cooperation to conflict, mating, parenting and predator avoidance. His research seeks to understand how variation in bird calls and songs within and between species can be explained by sexual differences, function, and more recently, context: the environment within which communication takes place. In both natural and urbanised environments, background noise can interfere with effective communication, and birds have evolved some ingenious solutions to this problem.
Images courtesy of Bridget Chappell and Raoul Mulder.
About our artists in residency
Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey are Australian audio conceptual artists who create unexpected situations for listening. They have a long term collaborative practice. Their work is driven by curiosity and questioning about listening in human culture and seeks to evolve and engage with new processes and audiences, through public and participative interventions. Their highly awarded practice intertwines local, national and international relationships. Current areas of interest are the sound of existential risk, the acoustics of the dark, the audio agents of artificial intelligence in public space, and long-form socially engaged public art interventions. They live in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Their work is documented at madeleineandtim.net.
Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey are Science Gallery’s inaugural artists in residence. Their project outcome is presented by Arts House in collaboration with Science Gallery Melbourne.
