Flanear – working title

Flanear is a public art soundscape project that aims to raise awareness of the Melbourne CBD aural environment. The compositional material of the soundscape will be sourced directly from audio samples of the city centre and then combined and manipulated in ProTools. The proposed arena of exhibition, which is more a point of inspiration than aspiration, will be at a central public space within the CBD (such as Federation Square).

This project is located within several related bodies of knowledge based on sound theories. The key theorists I am referencing are Luigi Russolo, Erik Satie and Pierre Schaeffer. These composers have contributed to understanding the manner in which we listen to our aural environments, and in what ways listening is, and has been, influenced and determined by social and technical conditions. Stepping away from the physics of acoustics and the physiology of the ear, Flanearexamines the psychological processes of aural perception.

A significant element to point out is the proposed title of Flanear. This is a play on the French, literary term “flaneur”, that refers to writers who stravaig through the urban landscape, drawing inspiration from everyday mundaneoccurrences.Flanear aspires to be the aural equivalent in using typical sounds of the CBD as inspiration as well as material. The creative literary method of flaneury is one I will be adopting for the project as it complements Russolo’s insistence that the urban aural landscape is ripe with artistic possibilities.

Luigi Russolo wrote his Futurist Manifesto in 1913, eager to prove the musicality of noise, specifically, noise of the then flourishing urban centres. He acknowledged that our perception of noise is culturally attuned; that is to say, what sounds were once considered unbearable have the potential to become the material of popular music; electronica is a modern example of noise becoming a popular music genre. Russolo realised that the emerging sounds of industrialisation offered an entirely new listening experience to be taken advantage of.

Erik Satie is often remembered as the grandfather of Muzak. Ignoring connotations to the low-quality MIDI songs of motel elevators, Satie was influential in recognising the ability to create music specifically for pleasant background noise. This “furniture” music was intended as a bed of noise over which other sounds gently travelled. In combining Satie and Russolo’s observations, Flanear offers the experience of using typically obtrusive city sounds in a composition, to be exhibited within the city, to raise awareness and hopefully appreciation of these noises.

Acknowledging and listening to the noises within the CBD as autonomous entities is a tribute to Pierre Schaeffer. Schaeffer was a prophet of the sonic object – sounds that are regarded separate from their source. A key technique in achieving this separation is through repetition. Since Flanear will source city sounds for a composition to be played in the city, this repetition will cause listeners to begin detaching a certain pitch to the imagery of a tram stopping. In terms of noise management in the city, there is the possibility that this conditioning of noises through repetition, in addition to sounds being perceived as autonomous and rich in their own right, may culturally attune ears to enjoy CBD noise.

Reconsidering narrative…

Around the beginning of semester we were encouraged to consider what style of narrative we’d adopt for the online documentary. Straight off I knew I’d be interested in documenting the body suspension culture, or more broadly, modern primitives. I’m personally interested and involved in the subculture, which made me assume that I would take on an equally personal narration through sharing particular stories and emphasizing the individuals who make up the community. However, after initial research into what Internet resources were already available, I realised there was a certain narrative missing from all the websites. There isn’t a website online that explicitly explains and represents the modern primitive movement. Many suspension websites seem to be more directed towards those already familiar with the subculture, otherwise they tend to be quite brief and superficial.

For these reasons, I have re-fashioned the narrative of my website into an informative one. Although there will not be nearly enough content to describe and fairly represent the whole community, I will be able to collate and categorise external links that I feel will complement the material I provide. It has been a bit of a challenge to step back from a topic that I am already quite extensively familiar with and look at it with fresh eyes. This website is to be written for people who are not familiar with either the modern primitive movement or body suspension community. I realise that the subject matter may be offensive to some people so I have to be careful not to force it onto anyone. The more objective and informative my website, the more willing people will be to navigate through it. I’d absolutely hate to perpetuate the shock value of the community, something that I feel contributes to its sense of stigma.

The primary role of my website will be to introduce the modern primitive movement and body suspension community to anyone who may not know about it. Acting as a hub, every aspect I cover on my website will include links to additional sites and information. Although navigation within my website alone will be rather limited, I hope that anyone who takes an interest will gain from the virtual directions of investigation I send them in.

Research Framework!

So far I’m dancing around the specifics of creating a soundscape for the Melbourne CBD (as I’ve repeated numerous times). Areas of practices and methodologies I need to focus on include: electroacoustic/soundscape composition techniques, public art policies/guidelines specific to Melbourne, Futurist Nosie & Furniture Music theories (Russolo, Satie, Eno, Cage etc.).

What forms of research will I be using?

• Action: I’ll be going through the 5 main steps of conduction action research. I’ll be studying noise complaints/perspectives of the city and investigating how a publicly exhibited soundscape may affect them. Questions I need to ask regard general opinions on city noises and what soundscape methods I can use to create aesthetically appealing virtual spaces. (On the other hand, I could focus on the process of proposing public exhibition of this composition, which will significantly alter the research framework of the project.) My findings can be appropriated and applied to my initial intentions, which in turn can be altered accordingly. I seem to be drawn to projects SIAL has already accomplished, so there may be an opportunity to share and discuss findings with people who have been involved in their works.
• Qualitative: Collate research from the CitySound Survey, public art policies/guidelines and soundscape practices then combine in a way that validates and refines my project. I could possibly create samples of noises to potentially be used in the soundscape and research reactions and interpretations of the sounds. This would require ethics approval since I’ll be working with test subjects.
• Applied: The project has begun with problem-based research that I will be applying to the method of composing the soundscape. Although I still need to specify my aesthetic approach, the purpose of the project is to reinvent Muzak in such a way that it embraces and uses typical sounds of the city in a non-obtrusive manner.
• Pure: Although generally an opposition to applied research, which I feel I will be utilising more, there is the possibility of doing some pure research for the project. In focusing my project to a manageable problem, pure research will be useful in generating ideas. Using pure research may be more useful in determining my individual aesthetic approach by observing and analysing existing techniques that resonate with my intentions.
• Primary: Closely relating to my qualitative research area, the sound samples used on test subject will be my main primary research. Further primary research could be to speak to those involved in processing applications/proposals for public soundscapes in order to find out how I may realise my project in a manner eligible for exhibition.
• Quantitative: Don’t much reckon I’ll be wearing these shoes.

Guest lecturer – Lee Hunt

This week’s guest lecturer made me think about several issues that face documentary makers; namely the extent and form of involvement of a producer with subject matter, and several issues of documentary ethics. What kind of authority do we have when producing a documentary, and does implementing ‘authority’ suggest some kind of hidden agenda that may affect the outcome of the documentary?

Some exampled thoughts:

• I remember reading something Kevin Carter wrote about the photo he took of a vulture near a starving Sudanese girl. After he took the photo, he shooed away the vulture and broke down in tears. It’s in extreme situations like this that documentary ethics really comes into question. Such as with animal documentaries, producers never step in the way of nature, even if it means a fluffy baby sloth will be mangled by an ant eater (or something, I haven’t watched any documentaries on sloths since I watched a baby one crying for its dead mother on National Geographic, heart breaking I assure you). So when it comes to documenting humanitarian misfortunes, there seems to be a conflict between the art/science of documentary making and fundamental human compassion. Perhaps it’s more an issue of subject matter than documentary ethics, but this example explicitly illustrates how the relationship between documenter and subject can be problematic.
• The last documentary I made was on a tree planting effort in NSW. This was my final university project and was supervised by and made for UNSW’s environment unit. The brief my production partner and I received was simply to document the semester’s tree planting weekend expedition. Neither of us had been involved in such a project before, so for preproduction research we watched some of the previous DVDs made to document the project. The ones we watched were, in a word, shit. Ignoring generally low cinematic quality, the videos seemed more a hodgepodge of moving image memories than anything that would be useful or interesting to anyone who doesn’t directly appear in the film. At first I thought it would be near impossible to write up preproduction notes; I had no idea what to expect and thought I’d have to wait until the weekend passed to even have a clue. And that, more or less, is what happened. My partner and I realised our documentary’s agenda after the weekend. With over 20hrs of footage recorded from the actual weekend, we pieced together clips with some key messages in mind. Obviously we had to promote the weekend to increase involvement, briefly explain and describe the event, depict it as a fun weekend. That’s a given, but for a short documentary (15mins) we needed more substance to capture an audience. The documentary began evolving around international students, who were repeatably the largest contributors to this particular tree planting effort. There was a huge mix of nationalities involved in this expedition, and from this we constructed a general message. International students experiencing typical Australian landscape, offsetting carbon emissions for a larger population. Now if only everyone did that.
• Everyone knows Michael Moore. He’s that famous documentary maker, right? Not in the slightest to discuss the politics of what he documents, I’m more concerned with the authority he has achieved. Perhaps it’s attributed to him bringing back the documentary as a more widespread, popular form of entertainment, but there is something that people always seem to forget when watching his films. Yes, yes, Bush is awful, don’t we all know it. But what about the fact that Moore is blatantly, obviously biased? Without arguing the validity of what he says, simply because he is an authority of popular documentaries does not give him the benefit of all doubt. He presents one side of an argument, and however popular it is, it would be foolish to assume it depicts the whole picture.

UNSW Landcare

UNSWLandcare is a group made up of students, staff and friends of the University of New South Wales. Every semester, the group organises a tree-planting weekend to help offset the university’s transport related carbon emissions.

UNSWLandcare2007 documents the tree-planting that took place on the weekend of 7-9 September 2007 at the Capertee Valley, NSW.

Co-produced/directed/edited with Martin Jose Ponferrada.

Suspension X

Kudos to The Hanged Man suspension team for another fine event. Held at an art gallery in Richmond on Saturday 29th January, the night saw numerous impressive suspensions – some first-timers, some vetrans of the sport – followed by a massive 22-way flesh pull.

See more.