Conjunctive and Disjunctive Relations (Composite)

BACKGROUND This work is located in sound culture research, particularly within sound art and experimental music that explores representations of complex spatial experience via composition. This debate is current in contemporary composition and record labels (noid and la Casa for Hibari, 2007 and 2006; Kirkegaard for Touch 2006) and books such as Hearing Places, ed Bandt, 2009, and Spaces Speak, Are You Listening, 2007, by Blesser and Salter. This composition in particular asks: How can the spatial experience of a multi-channel composition, first rendered in an exhibition space, subsequently be adequately conveyed and expanded into a new work as a stereo composition, acting both as document and as new work? CONTRIBUTION In practical terms, this composition is comprised of on-site documentation of a multi-channel and multi-room composition, as well as the raw material initially diffused in those spaces. The final composition is the result of testing the interplay of original sounds and documentary recordings in ways that, while referencing the initial space and composition, sit in critical relation to it. This work's contribution then is the way in which it sits between artwork and document, placing in tension the past and the present of a spatial experience, thus contributing to the curatorial theme of Place within which the work was presented. In this way the work contributes to questions around representation vs documentation and illustration vs enactment which suffuse discourse around representations of place, the role of field recording and opportunities for composition to provide a vehicle to critically consider these tensions. SIGNIFICANCE I composed this new work in response to the curatorial theme 'Place' on the invitation of curator Dr Philip Samartzis. It was presented on listening stations in the prestigious blockbuster Melbourne Now at the Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, with visitation of 753,071.