Daily Hearings

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: 'Daily Hearings' was a series of assemblages of found and re-distributed sound fragments from the Performance Studies international (PSi) #22 conference 'Performance Climates.' Four days of the conference provided the impetus to monitor, record, and re-distribute interrelationships between the dramaturgy of conference organisation, vectors of individual participation, circumstantial happenings, and microclimates of experience. An algorithm-based process was created to gather sound samples, before arranging them into different layers or categories, transferring them to a pre-scripted process of transformation, and then releasing them back into the atmosphere of the conference via online streaming. This work was produced by Mick Douglas with Simon Maisch (sound artist) and Theron Schmidt (performer and scholar based at UNSW). RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: 'Daily Hearings' explored the temporal and spatial aspects of the 'climate' of 'Performance Climates' through the concepts of: 'Now time' / the built environment; 'Discursive time' / imaginative space; 'Circadian time' / local ecology; and 'Geological time' / global life systems. The work demonstrates Douglas' interest in score-based processes of collection and transformation, and his ongoing research into new forms of live, performative practices that engage with aesthetic experiences of mobility, and cultural and social atmospheres. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The proposal for Daily Hearings was reviewed by the conference committee before being accepted as part of the annual international conference and performance program of PSi: the peak international body for Performance Studies, which brings together artists, thinkers, activists, and academics working in the field of performance. The event was attended by approximately 500 people.