Artifice and Integration as Design Considerations in the Creation of Sound Installations and Site-Specific Environmental Music
Ros Bandt · Filigrane · 2015
Two major case studies, 2013 residencies, the indoor urban Floating Glass sound art exhibition, November-January, and the remote outdoor JaaraJaara Project lasting the full year, will be contrasted and compared with a view to showing different design modalities integrating sound, ecology and art. The intentions of both sounding artworks are framed by the respective physical, acoustic and ecological systems each location possesses. Floating Glass was designed for a stark white urban gallery in central Melbourne is designed to enhance visual art and show off the prowess of the "artist" as designer and executant. By way of contrast and scale, the 55 acres of land for wild life in the JaaraJaara Central Victorian bushlands, is a unique natural box-ironbark woodlands environment, a habitat with complex botanical, bird, animal and human activity. It is in the process of regenerating after colonial pastoralism, the gold rushes, hobby farms and is now an acoustic sanctuary celebrating indigenous knowledges and landcare. What and how does the sound artist want to contribute to the already complex relationships of sound, ecology and acoustic space in these locations?These two different case studies, Floating Glass and the JaaraJaara Seasons highlight aspects of the design process rarely analysed in the art or musical worlds. How much should we introduce and change the environments we design for? What are the intended outcomes? Will it be lasting? Is the artifice created transportable? Who is it for? What is its ecological impact? How sustainable is the artwork? What is its ecological footprint? How important are aesthetics, innovation, the new? Who is the arbitor?: The organisor, the funder, the artist, the critic, or the audience? Both works, Floating Glass and JaaraJaara Seasons exist as individual solutions to these questions. They are unique and very different aggregates of both artifice and integration, terms that help to analyse complex artistic constructs and new sonic habitats.