Bogong Centre for Sound Culture: Notes from the Field

Observations of a falling light is a site-specific installation – a response to Tetzlaff’s experience on the Alpine High Plains. A series of photographic prints showing the Alpine sky have been positioned on the floor amongst
large stones, connected with yarn to the ceiling. The work aims to bring together and contemplate the interrelationships of materiality, gravity, and speed. It considers how these phenomena manifest themselves in a variety of shapes and sizes.

The Mountain Archetype presents an interactive multi-sensory map of the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme. Each of the four speakers represents one of
the four power stations located along the Kiewa River in the Alpine National Park.

Using electromagnetic microphones, Chappell has recorded the sound output (between the music note G – G sharp in tuning) of each of the stations, which descend in pitch along with the altitude. Audience participation activates the speakers bringing each power station’s frequency into the galleries and creating a discordant melody.

Acqua Aurea was a four-meter concertina book by Italian artist Daniela d’Arielli. The work was made up of photographs of the four power stations of the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme, printed on sheets of gold paper.

The gold hints at a preciousness. It speaks to the Eucalyptus marginata of the surrounding Alpine forests, which are known to draw gold through their root systems, accumulating in small quantities in their bark and leaves.
It is also suggestive of the small particles of false gold that shine in the region’s shallow waterways.

D’Arielli is interested in the relationships of coexistence and conflict within the landscape, fluctuations between the natural and artificial.

The sequence of images in Bogong Field Array were developed during a residency at Bogong Centre for Sound Culture in late 2019.

Images of the mechanics of hydro power production sit alongside photographs of the densely forested mountain ranges inviting viewers into a conversation about energy and ecology. The photographs have been taken at night, lit by the camera’s flash or the dim illumination of the hydro power stations. Bogong Field Array is part of Wilson’s ongoing project of observing our illuminated environments and recording their strangeness and complexity.

Each of James Geurts’ artworks for Notes from the Field focused on interventions upon the Kiewa River. The damming of the river as part of the Hydroelectric scheme shifted the river’s self-determined trajectory and applied a measure of civic usefulness to its existence.

Deconstructing A River documents the Lake Guy dam wall and surrounds using a modified video camera. The camera’s exposed electrical circuitry reveals an electromagnetic field, disrupting, altering, and abstracting the image.

Electric Water was a series of drawings also generated on the Kiewa River, near Bogong Village. The works were scanned in-situ using a reconfigured scanner, using the technology as a mode of intervention itself – creating
ruptures in the data feed, pulse glitches from the artist’s hand, and colour field abstractions. The works reflected the moment that the water flow becomes electrical current.

Circuitry was a neon wall work that is influenced by the site work Geurts undertook at Bogong Centre for Sound Culture. The pulsing blue gas of the neon, the exposed wires and the transformers revealed the electrical current
flowing through the artwork, with one neon deliberately malfunctioning to suggest the interception of river for the purpose of producing of power.

As part of Notes from the Field, Justas Pipinis presented My Working Week as a Dog. The eight-hour video was a mapping of Bogong Village with a small terrier, Archie, as a guide.

Justas Pipinis was an artist in residence at Bogong Centre for Sound Culture in 2020. Like his fellow artists in the exhibition, Pipinis used his time at Bogong to record the environment around the Village. Where his project
departs is in using Archie as a camera dog. Nightly walks around the village and the lake become fieldwork sessions with a camera mounted to Archie. This playful shift in perspective unsettles categories and conventions of fieldwork and invites audience to see the world anew.

My Working Week as a Dog is avaliable to watch on the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture website.

This collection of work was made during several residencies at Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, compiled from photographs and written notes gathered from walks around Lake Guy. This source material was
later manipulated and compiled to create large-scale images and artist books.

Rudimentary photographic techniques had been employed, including the use of a Black Mirror, a slightly convex, hand-sized black lens that was widely used by artists in the 18th and 19th centuries to contemplate, reconfigure and record the landscape.

Village Loop was an audio visual work investigating the eco-acoustic characteristics of Bogong Village. The work was an attempt to express the experience of isolation while living in a remote community (of few permanent residents).

Using an iterative process of documentation, various details and characteristics were recorded each day to reveal changes in atmosphere, variations in habitat, and processes of land management. The editing process included temporal disruptions and colour alteration to fracture the image quality to convey the psychological experience of isolation.

KONTAKT was an installation of incandescent lamps controlled by electrical switching units that work independently of one another. The sounds of the light controlling elements are acoustically amplified. Like some luminous organism, groups of bulbs light up in short bursts, creating a continuously
changing visual and acoustic rhythm.

Alongside KONTAKT was FELD, a set of nine images that combined photography and drawings to visually represent Vorfeld’s ongoing series of light and sound performances, Light Bulb Music. Each print shows a different part of the complex circuitry that goes into the performances. A new work from the Light Bulb Music series, titled SILHOUETTE has been created for Notes from the Field and is viewable online.

Atmospheres and Microclimates is a multichannel sound
composition that is audible throughout the Notes from
the Field exhibition.

The work draws upon the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture archives and comprises natural, atmospheric and anthropogenic sounds. The composition is designed to expand the understanding of the eco-acoustic characteristics of the Bogong High Plains, and how they are being transformed by warming temperatures, dynamic weather, and increased anthropogenic activity.

Kiewa depicts the impact on the Kiewa Valley of the most expansive hydroelectric project in Victoria. Kiewa began as a two-week residency at Bogong Centre for Sound Culture for Canadian artist Collis, who gathered audio field recordings and video footage from the region. This approach allowed for an unscripted process of listening, recording, and reacting to variable conditions. Audiences were encouraged to approach the work and experience it as a sensory space.