Come walk with me. Together we can listen to the sounds of the past and present.   

Using audio based media, I’ve chosen to investigate the question  – How can listening to the Moorabool River attune us to a site’s past and presence? 

As my time-based media was an audio piece, I believed it would be beneficial for my studio concept to be ‘listening’.  I drew great inspiration from Kanngieser and Todd’s passage in ‘Critical Modes of Listening’.  Here, Kanngieser and Todd bring together sounds, voice, and prose to reflect on the European impetus of separation of people, ecologies, and culture.  Throughout my project, I used Kanngieser and Todd’s extract to understand the importance of getting to know the living beings and sites that we’re working to thus collaborate cooperatively with nature.   It is through this I aimed to take on a critical approach to listening, and acknowledge the Moorabool River’s history, which involves both the Indigenous history of where the name generated from –  and the sad environmental tolls and impacts of the gold rush.  I wanted like to use the concept of listening to ‘bend the ear’ and enable my listeners to become aware of colonisation in everyday life – just how Kangeiser says in ‘Critical Modes of Listening’ – “the problem with white people is that they think and behave like they own everything”. 

One thing I learned through process of making this soundwalk, was that a microphone collects all sounds indiscriminately.  It does not select or isolate our sounds; which is actually similar to how ears behave when we are in foreign surroundings.  When I approached the Moorabool River for the first time last year, I instantly noticed a shift in my ecological awareness.  I was purely fascinated by the calm environs around me, and the dynamic soundscape created by the complex ecology of kookaburras, gallahs, cockatoos, kangaroos and so much more.  I was completely drawn to the smell of fresh water from the river, the trees dancing in the cool breeze, scent of eucalyptus, the muddy and leafy soil, the tall gumtrees, and simply the juxtaposition of this freedom to the business of urban life. Thus through this piece, creating a layered soundscape and playing with ducking was integral to attuning my listeners to my own perception of the site.