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Taming the wind: Aeolian sound practices in Australasia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2004

ROS BANDT
Affiliation:
The Australia Centre, University of Melbourne, 137 Barry St, Carlton 3053, Victoria, Australia E-mail: r.bandt@unimelb.edu.au

Abstract

The movement of air is a powerful sound generator. Its presence has been perceived and encoded for over 40,000 years in Australia. It is present in natural and humanly organised environments. This paper traces various wind paths, from natural casuarinas to telegraph wires. Artists such as Peggy West-Moreland, Joan Brassil, Alan Lamb, Jon Rose, Chris Cree Brown, Jodi Rose, the present author and many others have devised their own Aeolian works that interpret, tame or represent the wind for acoustic purposes. Their attitudes to wind-powered sound installations are compared and contrasted against a variety of installation genres, found, permanent, semi-permanent, and ephemeral.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

My thanks go to Alice Kelly, Mutti Mutti elder; all the artists for so generously providing information, especially Joan Brassil and Chris Cree Brown; Nick Evans, Professor of Linguistics, University of Melbourne; Iain Mott for image transfers; and The Australian Sound Design Project.