the sound of the underground

As well as the daily (or at least regular) process of listening to the estate, and the compilation of people's favourite songs (song of the day), i'm also capturing the sounds of the actual underground car park.

acoustically, it's amazing and i wish i had more concrete sound skills to be able to work with it better.
but, failing that, i've put a stack of mics up around the space, plugged them into the neighbourhood house's mix desk and have been listening to a beautiful mix of all the sounds of the space at once (perhaps a bit like what i do above ground, but more technical - less conceptual).

i'm from that i'm going to plug the mix into a headphone amplifier and fix a stack of headphone jack cables to the areas that are accessible from above ground: grills, grates, doorways, drains, etc.

so that peeps on the estate can come and listen to the sounds of the underground by plugging their own headphones in.

i'm a bit stuck as to how to have a nice finale now. it keeps changing, based on the difficulty i'm having in a) organising basic things and b) my motivation.

for some reason, i'm struggling with it at the moment and i'm not sure what that's about. annoying, actually, as there's rather a lot to do.

writing about it helps a little, which is handy. because then i get to tell you peeps all about what i've been doing at the same time.

there'll be more info at hand, but put these details into your diary:


ARTIST TALKS/PANEL DISCUSSION

Art and The Housing Estate
Friday 4th November
3pm - 5pm
The Underground

with artists from the AURA Project, Greyspace, Tony Reck and panel moderated by Benjamin Cittadini.


LISTENING PARTY/OPEN DAY
Culmination of my residency at Collingwood Housing Estate

Saturday 19th/Sunday 20th November (TBC)
2 - 6pm

Listen to the Underground through the in built listening stations
Pick up a copy of the Collingwood Playlist - everyone from the estate's favourite songs
See the Sound Walls - lists of all the sounds heard on the estate, as the Listener-in-Residence

today was a busy day

- 1 wall of the men's shed painted black (in preparation for a sound wall)
- a listening project done with the year 8 music class from collingwood college
- emails sent about upcoming artist talks and panel discussion
- all 3 panellists locked in (although i just realised they're all blokes. hmm)
- 6 favourite songs discussed
- PA delivered again (mics up next week)
- fairy lights bought in preparation for a shoot tmrw
- some lines mostly learned.
- plus plenty of discussion with local arty types

my favourite song is

during the residency, i have been asking residents and locals what their favourite song is. i'm compiling them and will be making a CD/mix tape/playlist. it's an audio snapshot of the area and a great way to get people talking about their relationship to music.

so many times i end up being serenaded by impromptu singing - it's actually really beautiful. and i often wish i had a film crew with me to capture my interactions.

i've also noticed that children and teenagers respond immediately to the question. they don't even think about it - they know that they have a favourite song and they know what it is.

no umming and ahhing, blocked about all the songs that have every meant anything. they're absolutely in the moment.

and i realised that i really am old.

i have NO idea about most of the songs that the kids and the teenagers love.
justin bieber rates highly, much to my chagrin. as does LMFAO. hilarious.

another interesting piece to note has been the prevalence of love songs. most people's favourite songs are about love. i've been writing up a song of the day on the blackboards outside the towers (that also convey the weather, anything on in the estate and the date), and most of them have had love in the title.

unsurprising when you think about it.


image credit: pinched from nikki's blog

movie night. not.

well, that was a bit of a failed attempt at doing a nice little thing for the residents.

saturday night was slated for a silent movie to be shown on the doorway to the underground. it didn't pan out. actually it bombed out in spectacular fashion - and i don't know if i can even learn any more lessons from it, apart from the fact that shit happens sometimes.

thanks to friday spent having to put out (miscommunication-instigated) spot fires and remove this wall work, i only had saturday to properly prepare. i was still sewing the white screen at 5pm on saturday night - breaking 3 sewing machine needles in the process.

i wasn't really handling it well already.

plus i was trying to organise it all on my own. not a good idea, actually.  i should have organised for mark or one of the others to help.

anyway, in the process of putting up the screen (with tony reck's help), i buggered the roller door.
and then the projection wasn't as good a throw as i remembered.
and then it started to rain.
i realised then that i was going to have to cancel. and it was 7:30 already.
and then kamil the security guy showed up. dammit!

flustered, i managed to run to the ATM to get kamil half his money, seeing as he had showed up. then i rang kaukau to find out what to do about the busted roller door, which she thankfully handled.

i began to take down the projector and speakers, etc and in there somewhere burst into tears. it was kinda ugly. and sad.

anyway, thanks to the shit weather (and not a lot of notice, truth be told), no one really turned up. which was ace and despairing at the same time.

my saturday night ended up being spent sitting with security, chatting about the state of the world, waiting for damian from maintenance to arrive so that he could fix the door.

quite the debácle.

however, i do still think a movie night is in order, so i'll reschedule it. i might try it in a different spot - only because the street light really drowns out the projection. or i'll make sure i get a better projector.

sigh.

listening poem

i never thought of what i did as poetry at all. until i had to explain to DHS what i did. saying it was a 'poem' was the quickest, simplest and easiest was to talk about the list of sounds i hear. then i went to electrofringe and the peeps from australian poetry and the new young writers festival said it was totally poetry. interesting. on tuesday i started writing up the list of sounds i've been listening to on the glass in the foyer at 240 wellington street. i did another installment of it this morning and two people came up to read what i was doing. and aesha, a girl who lives in the wellington street block said that it was a poem and she liked reading it. when i talked about how i came to the words, she agreed that when you break it down like that, we listen to a lot, don't we. in fact, she liked the idea so much she's going to join me listening tomorrow afternoon! what a great result that is.

listening as a public act of kindness

today was a beautiful day outside.

on the way back from the toilets (which are in harmsworth hall at the moment - a bit of a walk), i saw one of the young african boys i spoke to this morning, sitting on his own, on the parkie's bench.

i veered over, planning to ask him again about his favourite song*. and when i got close, i realised that i had his face in his hands. when i asked him if he was ok, he started crying. poor love.

i sat down next to him and listened to him cry and tell me, sobbing, about what happened. i didn't quite catch the whole story, but i did understand
'ah fffound a handbbag ffuh mmuh mum and mmmuh cuzzzin tttookit and guh-guh-ggave it tu-tuh his mmuh-muh-mumm...hoo hoo hoo..'

he found a handbag for his mum and his cousin stole it from him. and punched him when he tried to get it back.

poor love.

i consoled him, sympathised with him and told him he didn't have to let his cousin speak to him like that. i let him sniffle along for a bit and then i took him back over to harmsworth hall, let him wash his face and i grabbed him some tissues to wipe his face.

his name is KK and he was quite reserved still, but trusted me, mostly. which is good. i'm a stranger.

i suggested that, instead of focusing on the missing handbag, he make his mum something instead and that she'd probably like that just as much (if not more) than a handbag. i'd meet him back at the park benches in 2 minutes.

he liked that idea, so i came back to the underground, grabbed a very expensive art magazine, some paper, scissors, textas, glue and headed back to where i agreed to meet him.

there we both sat and cut out things from art & australia - he made his mum a card with an ad from this exhibition by joanna lamb, with "i love you mum" on it. i started cutting out from articles about the john kaldor foundation, fashion exhibitions and romance was born.

i think the process was cathartic for both of us.

it was such a lovely gesture and it felt like it was still within my project of listening to the estate. rather than listening to the ambient, collective sounds, i listened to KK and his story.

the story of him maybe having to stay in melbourne because his mum couldn't afford the ticket back to mildura (where he lives - he was just visiting).

the story of him being third in the top 3 goal scorers in under 10 soccer and having scored a goal in under 12s. he's 8.

the story of him not knowing much about sudan, where his parents are from, but having lived in frankston, cranbourne (the last station in melbourne - his words), doncaster, footscray and now mildura. he thinks mildura's OK. it's not the greatest, but it's not the worst.

and his favourite song is by LMFAO.

by the time we finished making pictures, i felt pretty good and KK felt a bit better. art didn't save the world today, but it did help him feel a little better and it gave him something nice to give to his mum. and an interesting story to tell her when he gets home.