P O R T F O L I O

for Bachelor of Fine Arts (Degree with Honours)

Imagine Text printed on archival paper, 210 x 297 mm, 2022.

Part of a series of text-based artworks that unfold in the imagination.

Study for ‘This moment is a time machine’ HD video of installation view, binaural soundscape, 9’05” looped, 2022.

Contextual Notes

As far as we currently know, for more than 90% of this planet's history, animals evolved in communicative silence as none could call, cry or sing (Haskell, D. 2022, pp. 35-44). But around 270 million years ago, an ancient cricket that lived in the Upper Permian of France rubbed its wings together producing, what biologist David G. Haskell refers to as, “the first known earthly voice”. And then, hundreds of millions of years later, in Hawaii in 1987 the last surviving member of a bird species, an endling male, calls out to a female but receives no response. A now extinct species, this moment was recorded for the very last time.

First Voice, Last Voice draws our attention to these two voices separated by a disorientating expanse of time. An act of remembrance, it brings together traces of the voices of these two species: a hard etching print of the fossilised wing of Permostridulus brongniarti and a spectogram pigment print of the last recording of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō (Moho braccatus). Illuminated by torchlight descending through an oculus located above, these two prints lie side-by-side on a hollow plinth installed at the very centre of a darkened octagonal room. A soundscape of cricket chirps and the ʻōʻō bird's last recorded call emanates from within the structure itself.

Contextual Notes

1.38km of black paper raffia twine representing the last 13.8 billion years since the birth of the universe. Tied end-to-end creating a continuous loop, the twine holds a single pale blue dot* denoting the relative climate stability of the last 11,700 years within this larger expanse of time. As a sculptural installation and durational work, it changes shape as people are invited to locate the dot on the surface of the twine. “This little spot of earth” is a reference to words written by Geoffrey Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde c. 1380 : “This litel spot of erthe, that with the see/ Embraced is” (this little spot of earth, that is with the sea embraced).

* The Pale blue dot is the name given to an iconic photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 6 billion kilometers from the Sun.

Imagine Text printed on archival paper, 210 x 297 mm, 2022.

Part of a series of text-based artworks that unfold in the imagination.

Listen carefully to the voices of Text, binaural field recording (75minutes, 10 seconds), 2022.

Around the world and across time humans have noticed birds and learned from them. Recent research from the field of ethno-ornithology confirms this too, highlighting how these ancient beings of the Earth are often seen as sign-bearers, guides and teachers that can affect our lives.* Following numerous encounters I have had with birds over the last few years, their songs and calls have begun to hold a particular meaning for me. And throughout this time we've begun conducting experiments. At dawn and dusk I often invite my avian kin (or they invite me to invite them, I'm never quite sure) to time-travel to near and distant futures and intercede, to contribute on our descendant’s behalf, to help make their presence heard today. They then return back in time to the present, to share what they've heard with me. With my field recorder in hand I’ve begun recording each response.

For this particular recording, I commissioned my collaborators, including the rare and notoriously timid Menura Alberti (the Albert's Lyrebird) as well as many other creatures from an ancient Gondwana rainforest on Bundjalung Country, to time-travel one millennium into the future, to the year 3021, to listen to what unborn generations might have to communicate with their ancestors. From times enfolded, this is what our descendants have to share with us.

To listen to this work, I recommend turning off your phone, finding a comfortable place to sit or lay down uninterrupted for the duration of the recording, wearing some over-the-ear/ noise-cancelling headphones, then press play, close your eyes and listen.

* Listen Carefully to the Voices of the Birds: A Comparative Review of Birds as Signs Journal of Ethnobiology, 2018, 38(4): 533–549. The title of the paper “Listen carefully to the voices of the birds” were words spoken by a Tukano hunter from northwestern Amazon and noted in Reichell and Dolmatoff’s 1971 book Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians: We “must...listen carefully to the voices of the birds because they predict success or failure…”.

Everyone is an ancestor Text printed on archival paper, 210 x 297 mm, 2022.