VAST: Visiting Artist & Scholar Talks

Is anthropocenic climate change audible? In three historical media tales, from Papua New Guinea, Japan, and Greece, I answer in the affirmative, with a montage of examples gathered from ethnographic field recordings, fiction film, installation sound and video art, popular song, and contemporary art music. The talk intertwines media history and practice, with specific examples from my audio and video work of the last 45 years.

Voices of the Rainforest, originally a 1991 Rykodisc CD, is a documentary sound art composition of a day in the life of the Bosavi rainforest and its inhabitants. For the CD’s 25th anniversary in 2016 the original analog tape recordings were digitized, and the 60 minute piece recomposed in 7.1 cinema surround sound, in collaboration with Skywalker Sound editor Dennis Leonard. With the support of producer Mickey Hart and the School for Advanced Research, 2017-2018 was devoted to building a film around the soundtrack, drawing both from my 1976-1999 photographs, and a return to Bosavi with filmmaker Jeremiah Ra Richards. The result is an immersive eco-rockumentary, a cinematic concert for ears.