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Listen carefully to the Voices of
Spectogram 3021 - An acoustic signature from an ancient future (2021)
Around the world and across time humans have noticed birds and learned from them. Recent research from the field of ethno-ornithology confirms this too, highlighting how these ancient beings of the Earth are often seen as sign-bearers, guides and teachers that can affect our lives.*
Following numerous encounters I have had with birds over the last few years, their songs and calls have begun to hold a particular meaning for me. And throughout this time we've begun conducting experiments. At dawn and dusk I often invite my avian kin (or they invite me to invite them, I'm never quite sure) to time-travel to near and distant futures and intercede, to contribute on our descendant’s behalf, to help make their presence heard today. They then return back in time to the present, to share what they've heard with me. With my field recorder in hand I’ve begun recording each response.
For this particular recording, I commissioned my collaborators, including the rare and notoriously timid Menura Alberti (the Albert's Lyrebird) as well as many other creatures from an ancient Gondwana rainforest on Bundjalung Country, to time-travel one millennium into the future, to the year 3021, to listen to what unborn generations might have to communicate with their ancestors.
From times enfolded, this is what our descendants have to share with us.
To listen to this work, set aside some time in a quiet place to consider and experience this transmission from the future. I recommend turning off your phone, finding a comfortable place to sit uninterrupted for the duration of the recording, wearing some over-the-ear/ noise-cancelling headphones, then press play, close your eyes and listen.
*Listen Carefully to the Voices of the Birds: A Comparative Review of Birds as Signs, Journal of Ethnobiology, 2018, 38(4): 533–549. The title of the paper “Listen carefully to the voices of the birds” were words spoken by a Tukano hunter from northwestern Amazon and noted in Reichell and Dolmatoff’s 1971 book Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians: We “must...listen carefully to the voices of the birds because they predict success or failure…”.
acoustic (and Visual) signatures
Continuing my commitment to an engagement with place, especially through listening, I often use a field recorder (or if that’s not available, simply my phone) to help me consider my/our place on Earth, especially in the context of geological time and change. Included here are field recording experiments documenting three separate sources of sound which make up a soundscape of a given region: anthropophony (human-generated sounds, including the technologies we employ), geophony (the sounds of natural forces such as water, wind and thunder); and biophony (the sounds generated by all sound-producing organisms). Best listened to with headphones, each field recording is a totally unique fingerprint of a particular time and place never to be heard in real time again.
Below I’ve also included some photographs, a video and a video still from where some of these field recordings were made and where ideas for new work have emerged. These visual records are examples of some of the things I do to document aspects of my creative process rather than something I intend to share publicly.
Photographs of the field recording site location for Listen Carefully to the Voices Of, 14th December 2021
Photograph taken in Wanganui Gorge 2019
Photograph taken at Broken Head 2020
Photograph taken at Tyagarah 2019
Still from a short video made in Goonengerry 2020
Experiment for a silent short-film idea I’m exploring. This video was taken using my mobile phone (the only recording device I had access to at the time), Tweed Hospital, January 2022
Photograph taken at Tweed Hospital, January 2022
research | ideas | proposals
public art
DEAR DESCENDANTS
...a long durational work is any work (of music, opera, film, theater, performance art, science, and others) whose performance exceeds six hours. The use of time is a crucial element of this genre. By slowing down, lengthening, or repeating actions normally unexamined, a long durational work encourages both its performers and audience to step outside of traditional conceptions of time and examine what this experience means to them (Marina Abramovic Institute, 2013).
Dear Descendants is, amongst other things, an ongoing self-initiated research initiative. Through it, I’m investigating long-durational artistic and cultural works with a particular focus on initiatives that exceed an average human lifetime. Some of the questions being explored include: How are these works helping us think, act and care for the long-term? How are they helping us develop deeper emotional connections with our human and more-than-human descendants?
Through meetings, interviews and site visits a three-month study tour had been organised to explore these questions in person, learning from and investigating options with pioneers, documenting their artistic, cultural & architectural sites/initiatives which have projected lifespans of 100 years (ie; Future Library) to over 1B years (ie; The Last Pictures). This was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic and, to date, all research has taken place online. Invitations to visit these various sites in person are still open. Some of these projects are noted here.
A key aim of the research has been to support the creation of a new platform which will enable the development of a long-durational artistic and cultural work in Australia. Encouraged by a number of artists, curators and producers involved in some of the above initiatives overseas, as well as supporters in Australia, Project 100+ and other ideas and works are being developed as a response (see below).
The ‘silent room’ for artist Katie Patersons’s Future Library located within the new Deichman Public Library (Oslo, Norway), one of the two resonant sites for this century-long public artwork. The room has been architecturally designed to house 100 unpublished and unread book manuscripts, which will be printed as an anthology in 2114. The other site is the Nordmarka forest outside of Oslo where a public manuscript handover ceremony unfolds each year (see below), Photo courtesy, Future Library Trust.
Project 100+
"…we are in the first instance a society that begins in deep time...if we would accept it, rather than spurn it, we might discover so many new possibilities for ourselves as a people.
Richard Flanagan, National Press Club Address, April 2018.
Since the beginning of the millennium we have seen the development and launch of a small but growing set of long-durational artistic and cultural works across the world that are projected to unfold over anywhere between 100 years to over 1B years. They include for example: Future Library in Norway (100 years); the Ok Glacier Memorial in Iceland (200 years); Letters to the Future in Vietnam (1000 years); Centuries of the Bristlecone (5000 years) and the Clock of the Long Now (10,000 years) in the USA; and The Last Pictures in geosynchronous orbit around Earth (1 billion + years) . These works provide much needed counterpoints to today’s accelerating culture. They invite us to stop and slow down, think on different time-scales, consider more deeply our role as ancestors and encourage us to cultivate care beyond our own lifetimes.
Project 100+ is a curatorial platform which supports the development, commissioning and launch of a comparative long-durational artistic and cultural work in Australia. Unfolding over a century or more, and enabled by multiple generations throughout this time, the commissioned artistic and cultural work will stand on the shoulders of giants. This includes a 65,000 + year living legacy of stewardship and care-taking born on this land and nurtured by its First Peoples. By supporting the creation of a long durational artistic and cultural work in Australia, Project 100+ is an invitation to participate in and continue this tradition of caring for the long-term for many generations to come.
Launching in 2023/24, the project will begin by featuring the small but growing constellation of long-durational artistic and cultural works unfolding across the world. Partnering with the artists, producers and communities behind each of these works, this star map of initiatives will provide a central repository for this nascent form of cultural production. These works will be documented through short films, essays, stories and more, providing visitors with a virtual pilgrimage. This will also become a learning resource for people interested in exploring this form of creative practice while providing further context for the commissioning process overall. In parallel, a curatorial vision and roadmap will be authored to guide the commissioning process which will be launched in 2023. This will lead to the selection and public launch of the commissioned long-durational artistic and cultural work in 2024/25.
Recently, Project 100+ has been supported by research undertaken throughout the Community Transmissions Artist Residency (funded by both the Australia Council for the Arts and the City of Melbourne). The project was later awarded seed funding from Arts Northern Rivers through its Your Big Idea platform which supports ambitious ideas ready to be developed into contemporary arts projects. This has enabled some initial conversations about the project in Sydney with curators and producers including: Emily Sullivan (Curator, Kaldor Public Arts Projects), Daniel Browning (Host, The Art Show, ABC Radio) and Sebastian Goldspink (Curator, 2022 Adelaide Biennial).
Project 100+ is the culmination of a decade-long inquiry into how we might engage culture and the arts to help nudge ourselves closer to making long-term thinking and action more accessible and common rather than obscure and rare. To date, this inquiry has unfolded on the lands of both the Wurundjeri and Arakwal people, with acknowledgment of their Elders and communities past, present and future.
Listen Carefully to the Voices of
I envisage the aforementioned Listen Carefully to the Voices Of as an installation as well as a permanent public art work. In terms of the latter, it could be reimagined and be enabled across multiple generations as a long durational artistic and cultural work, similar to what I have just described. One idea I have in terms of how this might unfold is summarised below.
Each year a new field recording could be played within Listen Carefully to the Voices Of, commissioned from a new resonant site within one of Earth’s increasingly threatened quiet places. Echoing the shared community rituals of the Ise Grand Shrine in Japan, The White Horse of Uffington in the UK and Future Library in Norway, this soundscape could be changed/renewed regularly for the work at a specific time of the year as part of a new kind of annual public ceremony. People would be able to listen to each new message from our descendants within an architecturally designed listening room, a type of time capsule or antenna which receives transmissions from the future. A place to ‘listen to the sounds beneath the sounds’, the listening room could be situated within a public space such as a public library. museum or gallery or as a stand alone structure in an urban or rural setting.
Three artistic and cultural works that engage recurring shared community rituals and public ceremonies that encourage people and societies to care beyond an average human lifespan:
This picture depicts a ceremony for the Ise Grand Shrine in Japan when it was rebuilt in 1849. This ceremony continues to this day and has unfolded for over 1000 years, with the shrine rebuilding and renewal process happening every 20 years (Picture by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1849).
The annual chalking of The White Horse of Uffington, a 3000-year-old prehistoric hill figure in England. Photo by Peter Landers.
The annual manuscript handover ceremony for Future Library unfolding in the Nordmarka forest outside of Oslo, Norway. Here South Korean novelist Han Kang leads a procession through the forest in 2019. The annual ceremony takes place in May/June of each year. This began in 2014 and will continue until 2114. Photograph: Bjørvika Utvikling by Kristin von Hirsch.
Earth Observatory
The Earth Observatory (working title) is a new public art work, a cultural gathering site, specifically designed to enhance our contemplation of Earth. It is currently envisaged for Australia but it may be activated elsewhere as conversations with supporters in other regions are also taking place.
Unlike many observatories that look out to the stars, this observatory is envisaged as a type of mirror that reflects a living, real- time, constantly-changing portrait of Earth back to humanity. In the tradition of ancient stone labyrinth structures that have been 'walked' by people around the world for centuries and used as a contemplative tool, the intent is for the observatory to be a site of pilgrimage and ritual which invites us to reflect on our place in space and time, not just conceptually but viscerally as a whole body experience.
To progress this project, I’ve had exploratory conversations with a range of people including, for example: First Nations wisdom keepers, experts in the field of indigenous astronomical science & sky knowledge, a former astronaut, a land art pioneer, architects, an ethicist and an experimental art and projection lab specialist. I was also invited to give a talk at Parsons School of Design (NYC) about the project a few years ago for Project Anywhere’s biennial conference exploring art and artistic research outside the ‘white cube’ and traditional exhibition circuit (see below).
While this project is currently on hold, next steps will likely focus on the production of a small number of architectural models. Initial conversations about this have been discussed with Kim Bridgland and Aaron Roberts from Edition Office at their offices in Melbourne and Federal House in the Northern Rivers. Their architectural firm has collaborated with both Daniel Boyd and Yhonnie Scarce on two award winning public art projects in Canberra (For Our Country) and Melbourne (In Absence).
...my memories of Naoshima tell me that if I had come across the Earth view rather than a Monet waterlily painting within the specific architecture that you walk through there on the island - the long, long, beautiful Ando dark tunnels, I would have sunk to my knees in wonder - and something like prayer. The image you use in your interview has that quality. Part of it is being able to see, from afar, others seeing it, silhouettes who are closer to the magnificent radiance you walk towards from out of the dimly lit tunnels, suddenly opening into a higher space, a limitless space...
Response from Christopher Bucklow as part of an email communication with Laurent Labourmène (December 2017)
Conference presentation abstract for Anywhere & Elsewhere, November 2018
Study for the Earth Observatory, Lagrangian points in the Sun-Earth System. (2018)
Study for the Earth Observatory, Earthbound (2019), archival inkjet print 59.4 x 42 cm
Presentation in New York City, November 2018, at Project Anywhere’s ‘Anywhere & Elsewhere’ biennial conference, Parsons Fine Art, Parsons School of Design (in partnership with The University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts & the Centre of Visual Art). Curated by Sean Lowry (VCA) and Simone Douglas (Parsons). Scroll to 30 minutes to view my presentation as part of the ‘Outlooks’ session Chaired by Thom Donovan.
Study for the Earth Observatory. A high definition satellite image picturing our home at a distance of about 36,000 km from the planet’s surface during one of Australia’s recent bushfires. Captured using the Himawarai 8 geostationary weather satellite, Japanese Meteorological Agency, December, 2019..
creative process
Below I’ve included some images which provide an insight into some aspects of my creative process. The pin boards are where I often place questions, ideas, thoughts, images, journal and other articles, news clippings and essays. I also often reach out to people as part of my creative process too. Over the years this has included, for example: archeologists, indigenous elders and wisdom keepers, planetary ecologists, architects, rock art specialists, former astronauts, systems scientists, evolutionary psychologists, performance artists, documentary film makers as well as pioneers in the fields of ethics, big history, land art, camera-less photography and experimental museology. At times this leads to nowhere, at other times it results in getting feedback from a specialist regarding a question I might have, and at other times an initial email, call or meeting can lead to an exchange that continues for many years.
For example, in the previous section regarding the Earth Observatory, initial ideas about the work were shared with some friends including artist Christopher Bucklow and ethicist Dr. Will Varey. During one exchange via email about the imagined work Chris replied and I’ve included part of that email text above (see the italicised quote in the previous section). Throughout our friendship over the years Chris and I have shared many emails and calls, discussing art, new works, pre publication essays he has written, interviews I’ve done etc. He’s also introduced me to his artist friend Simone Douglas who in turn invited me to a conference to present some of my work. The beginnings of this friendship and exchange with Chris were shared in a short article by Kate Bezar (see below). The final piece noted below is entitled Humanity’s Humility and it is a type of poem written by Will in response to the Earth Observatory project I’ve been discussing with him for some time. The text describes an imagined procession to and from the proposed work as a new type of cultural pilgrimage site and place of contemplation.
Makes Light Work, article by Kate Bezar for Dumbo Feather Magazine Issue 14, December 2007. Image included in the article is by Christopher Bucklow and is titled Tetrarch 10:59pm 25th November 2004. A leading figure of the contemporary British ‘cameraless’ photography movement, Chris was also a curator in the Prints & Drawings Department, Victoria & Albert Museum, London between 1978-1995..
Humanity’s Humility, Dr Will Varey 2019. This was written in response to our conversations about the Earth Observatory which is discussed in the previous section above.
