Artists:
Robert Baines

Ros Bandt

Clare Belfrage
Bronwyn Goss
Jacqui Gropp
Adrian Jones
Janie Matthews
Anne Neil
Susan Purdy
Sue Saxon
Liz Williamson

ROS BANDT

Artist's Statement

Many years ago I visited a friend in Gippsland and we joked and talked through apertures in her then near empty concrete water tank. I was awestruck at the magnificent resonance of this space and how it changed the properties of sound.

A few days later I returned armed with a Nagra tape recorder, a cymbal and some primitive sound making devices. Once inside the tank, gumboots in water, yabbies and cold dark condensation falling from the roof above me, I felt that I was living inside my ear. Sound was travelling around me up down, through. The water and air conducted the invisible sound vibrations differently. As I lowered the struck cymbal into the water, and then in the air, the sound changed. You have to wait for the sound to stop singing as it flies around the cylinder in its own time. You can activate sounds one after the other so they chase each other, until death. Making sound in such a space is like sound painting in action. You learn to swim in a sea of sound. Cymbal and water is a live real-time improvisation made in this concrete water tank. It is one of a number of exploratory investigations..  There is no editing or electronic manipulation.  . Water Medicine has led me to reconsider how this common water tank experience changed my life. I realised that sound could be made to fly about and shaped in three-dimensional space through time. I became dedicated to creating architectural and spatial musics, and hearing the sound environment around me as an ongoing changing soundscape. Living inside your ears is never boring. Awareness channels drill from the ear to the eye so you can ‘see’ things differently. Cymbal and water was my own water medicine, providing alchemical relationships which have never ceased to charm me or trick the clever sound engineer.  Through deep and immersive listening one can sense the physical effect and power of invisible sound vibration.  The original vinyl disc, Improvisations in Acoustic Chambers is being re-released for this occasion as a limited edition CD for Water Medicine, kindly sponsored by Move Records.

 



Alchemy Brass cymbal, perspex, water, CD 15 x 150 x 60



Ros Bandt recording the sound of the cymbal in a water tank.

CV

See Ros Band't web site

Selected Curated Exhibitions

1999 Globex/Grainco, wheat silo environment.
1998 Beaming the Theremin Grainger Museum, October 18, Melb Festival.
1994 Sound sculpture in the Bagging Room, the first women's sound sculpture show, the Malthouse, Composing Women's Festival

Selected Individual Exhibitions and Group Shows

1999 Male Order: Addressing Menswear, computer composition for the exhibition, Ian Potter Museum, Uni of Melb
1998-2000 Audite acoustic art, audible paintings & sound sculptures, Mechanics Institute Gallery, City of Moreland,
September 4-22, Travelling Regional Art Galleries Victoria
1997 A Garden for Percy's Delight, Grainger Museum, Uni of Melbourne, Melbourne International Festival
1996 Voicing the Murray River: Endangered Species series 1, Commissioned by the Mildura Art Gallery for the Mildura Festival.
1994 Dangerous Choices (g) Lend Me Your Ears Sound City Spaces, Sound Symposium , Memorial University Art Gallery, New Foundland,3 Interactive sound sculptures in black boxes
1994 Pillars of Memory, Zeitgleich digital art symposium, Transit, Innsbruck, Austria
1993 Altars of Power and Desire, 8 channel interactive sound sculpture installation, Architecture Gallery Ball State University, Indiana USA
1992 The White Room, Collaborative work, 5 artists, Centrum Ujadowsky, Warsaw Poland

Monograph

1999 Sound Sculpture in Australia, Ros Bandt. Craftsman House

Curator's Statement

Water is a medium for sound as well as light. Ros Bandt's 'aqua-sonics' uses a cymbal to invoke the density of water. Surrounded by the walls of the water tank, her piece evokes the subterrenean sounds of the Australian outback.
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