Do you like messing around with sounds? Workshops participants will explore the sounds of Birrarung Marr through a sound walk, and gain hands-on experience with field recording, and create location-based recordings, scores, and charts.

Come along to the second stage of this project to help create the contents of the sound capsule for future humans. The kids of today will bury the sound capsule near ArtPlay so that it can be rediscovered by the kids of tomorrow.

What do you think this place will this place sound like in the future?

In addition to this sound collage, the Sound Capsule contains a vinyl record and an M disc, a sound map, a graphic score made up of kids drawings, instructions to retrace the steps of the sound walk that they did together, photos, and a letter to future humans.

Hear the Sound Collage we made together below or on bandcamp

You can read the letter we wrote to future humans below: 

Hello future humans, 

You have just uncovered a Sound Capsule which was buried here as a gift for you by the kids at Art Play way back in 2021! 

This place, on Wurundjeri land, on the banks of the Birrarung/Yarra River is very special to us, and we’d love to know how it sounds different now than it did way back then when we made this. 

Can you still hear the great bass rumbling of trams going overhead down by the water under Swanston St? Are there still gangs of seagulls squabbling over office worker’s lunch scraps? Does the wind still rustle through the majestic gums up near the Federation Bells? Oh yeah, are the bells still ringing out up there 3 times a day? 

Listening takes time, and it takes attention too. It can be easy to forget to listen to what’s around you, and people who make maps and time capsules almost never include what a place sounded like. We tried to imagine what it would have sounded like here 50 years ago, or 200 years ago before the river was straightened and deepened and the waterfall down stream was flattened out… but it was really hard.  

Sounds are fleeting and fragile, and because they’re hard to pin down and preserve, maybe we don’t take enough care of them. We wanted to make a special place to send some of our sounds into the future, so that you can be transported back to when we were here. It’s almost as cool as time travel…  Wait, have you invented real time travel yet?! 

In the Sound Capsule, there are a few different things for you to discover:

The record: 

On the record there is a Sound Collage made from recordings we made around this place. Recordings of our favourite sounds, the ones we hope you can still hear in the future. 

We put all these sounds together to make a story of this place now. 

We also recorded some questions we wanted to ask you. 

We hope you still have record players… If not, if you run a small piece of metal along the grooves of the vinyl and connect the metal to a cone, you’ll hear our sounds come out.

The M disc and DVD player: 

This special kind of disc is made up of ground up rock and is supposed to be able to last 500 years! There is a digital copy of everything in the Sound Capsule on here. 

The Sound Map:

We made this sound map based on what we can hear when we were walking and listening around Birrarung Marr. Each layer of the sound map represents how close the sounds are to us. The first layer in the close sounds (like bikes riding past, and the gentle lapping of the water) The second layer is the distant sounds (like chatter on the other side of the river bank and trains pulling into the station) and the last layer is our future imagined sounds- how much did we get right? 

A Sound Walk Guide: 

This guide will explain to you how to retrace the steps of the sound walk that we did way back in 2021. Start from the front door of Art Play, or if Art Play isn’t here anymore the coordinates are here: 5XJC+MJ Melbourne, Victoria. 

Photos:

We’ve included photos of the sites that are part of our sound map, and the places where we made the recordings. There are also a few polaroid snaps of the kids who performed with the Letter String Quartet, to celebrate the burial of the Sound Capsule on the 14th of April 2021. 

Graphic Score:

We made a graphic score based on the sounds we heard around here. It is designed to be played by a group of string players and a group of kids playing homemade instruments and percussion . If you want to play it again that would be so cool! 

We made this Sound Capsule as a gift for you- future kids who we can only just imagine right now. We hope you enjoy uncovering what’s inside…

Lots of Love, from the kids at Art Play…

Oska, Nyssa, Rose, Chris, Maverick, Axel, Isla, Abagail, Ada, Henry, Maya, Charlotte, Layla, Elliot, Cooper, Isabella, Zavier, Zach, Clarissa, Ahana, Taylor, Robert, Chris, Coco, Momoka, Evelyn, Lowri, Matilda, Billy, Khepa, Oscar, Henry, Hogan, Evan, Eden, Saskia, Sarah, Olivia, Ava, Eisa, Hazel, Talia, Indah, Freddie, Maverick, Oliver, Elise, Toshihiro, Yoshiharu, Raissa, Ela, Obi, Oliver, Anton, Zayd, Eesa, Gulli, Odessa, and Anouk, our graphic designer Elwyn Murray, and our sound obsessed friends Aviva Endean and Justin Marshall.

Aviva Endean and Justin Marshall share a deep fascination of sound and interactive artworks, focusing on creating spaces for deep listening as well as the playful engagement of the audience. Their debut work for children ‘I Am Hear’ was awarded Best Kids Work at The Melbourne Fringe Festival 2018. 

FURTHER DETAIL ON THE WORK

Audiences move through a labyrinth which is filled with 12 experiences. There are no instructions as to how to interact with the objects, but there are performers who are inside the labyrinth who help guide the play with sound and movement, and the children also often share their knowledge and what they have discovered with their friends and strangers alike. The only rule in the Sonic Labyrinth is that there are no words. You can use you voice in any other way, but without words.

The 12 experiences are all interactive, some are experienced alone, and some can be experienced my many people at the same time.

1. Listening with the soles of your feet: The entrance to the Sonic Labyrinth is a long dark corridor. The floor is covered in surfaces of all different textures. As you walk along them a special set of ‘hear muffs’ drags a tube along the ground allowing you to hear the sound of each different surface, as you feel them with your bare feet.
2. The giant spring drum: Crawl inside, lie down and be immersed in the intergalactic sounds on the spring drum. When you have finished listening, you can play it for your friends.
3. Head in a box: This mysterious object invites you to stick your head inside a geometric mirror box and play with the sound of your voice reflected in a never-ending echo chamber.
4. The Sonic Bridge: Walk the plank! As your get further and further along the narrow beam, you will hear the pitch of the strings rise in trepidation, and feel the vibrations through your feet. Make it all the way along and you can play for the next risk-taker.
5. Goodnight harp: A secret room is revealed, where you find a bed to crawl into. A musician tucks you into bed, puts a special set of ‘hear muffs’ on you and plays a strange lullaby for you on a ‘bone-conduction harp’ that only you can hear.
6. Cymatic Pool: Vibrations make incredible patterns form on the surface of a glowing pool of water. Control what you see and what you hear with interactive light sensors and torches.
7. The Sonic Web: It looks like a laser maze, but if you touch a beam it will make a sound! Try to get through silently, or get stuck in the web playing spacey synthesiser sounds.
8. Voice in a Bucket: Sing into a funny looking tube and your voice will mysteriously emerge from a nearby bucket suspended in the air
9. Underwater listening: Hear the squelch and gurgles of underwater sounds with a special set of ‘hear muffs’ than enable you to hear and feel the hidden sounds beneath the surface.
10. Moon Rock: A hanging dodecahedron shoots out beams of light. When you cover a beam with your hand, you can hear and feel it respond to your touch. See what happens if you can cover all the beams together with your friends.
11. Melodic Winds: A special set of ‘hear muffs’ invites you to hear the sound of wind. Move your head to catch a rift of wind to play a melody that only you can hear.
12. Tingle Fingers: Exit the Labyrinth with one last chance to play all together! Put on a pair of gloves with very long, thin sticks attached to each finger. Step through a pool of bell bowls and making them ring and tinkle all the way along your final part of the journey.

Punctum Live Arts: The Kultur-All Makaan

Part handcrafted lounge room, part cultural centre, Puctum’s Kultur- all Makaan arose from a unique collaboration between local live arts organisation Punctum, and artists from the Hazara, South Sudanese and Karen communities of Central Victoria.

Justin Marshall and I have been working on new musical collaborations with members of the Tamil, Karen, South Sudansese and Hazara communities in Bendigo for a very special and intimate meeting place designed by Punctum together with these communities.
The Kultur-All Makaan is a new artistic and architectural response to how we might collectively welcome and celebrate the cultural contributions of members of Hazara, South Sudanese and Karen communities of the region. It is a cultural ideal of a home for arts. One that is open, evocative, democratic, and generous, inviting connection and reflection.

Rosalind Park, Bendigo.
FREE
More info

Equal parts playful, puzzling, intense and relaxing, I AM HEAR exists in a space between experimental performance and sound meditation, inviting children to engage with deep listening and to hear the echoes of their inner worlds.

I Am Hear invites children into an immersive blindfolded listening experience based of the story of Echo. After their blindfolded sonic journey, the children will have the opportunity to create their own soundscape for their adults, using the fragile and elusive sounds of everyday objects.

Aviva has a wide range of experience designing and facilitating workshops involving making instruments with recycled materials, listening games, music-making, and developing performances with and for children.

Past workshops include sessions for:

Chamber Made/The Venny Playground – Sound playground design and performance with Children from the Venny Community Backyard. More info

Barunga festival (NT)- making and playing harmonic flutes

TURA Sonuc tour (Kimberley WA) – music workshops in remote schools

Vision Australia/Melbourne Recital Centre for ‘Sound Matters’- discovering unusual modes of listening like bone conduction and hearing resonant frequencies

The Village Festival Junk Instrument making and a performance with BJ Morrizonkle

Art Play Children’s Art Centre – instrument making, deep listening and music making workshops.

Instrument making The Village festival, Folk Rhythm and Life, Art Play