communion: a sonic wandering in the dark was part of Liquid Architecture's 2015 'What Would a Feminist Methodology Sound Like?' series at West Space gallery, Melbourne. 

 

A starting point for this work was thinking how Acoustic Wayfinding is sometimes used as framework in my practice. I then began a fascination in how parabolic mirrors were used in the First World War which were situated along the English coast, and how these elements of technology (parabolic mirrors), nature (the act of listening for enemy planes and physical site of the mirrors) and time (gross material of mirrors decaying, change in ecological nature and human history i.e. war and death) created a methodology of heightened awareness. It then inspired the thought of using two of the common most feared human things for this work: loud noises and darkness,to temporarily (re)active a dormant heightened awareness in the gallery space.

 

A group of performers were invited to enact a series of pedestrian gestures to an indeterminate composition orchestrated by the synthetic sounds of nature from the iPhone, in complete darkness. These gestures i.e. clapping, whistling, clicking and ‘silence’ which are used universally in diverse contexts, are both familiar yet alien when they are projected from the body. Here, the intersection of temporality, technology and place is activated where the artist was curious to see how these components of heightened awareness sonically impact the human psyche and experience.

 

The audio documentation is available here: 

 

https://soundcloud.com/liquid_architecture/fmx4-ann-fuata