Featherstone Sound Space

Australia’s first permanent urban surround-sound installation exhibition site (2019-) 

Featherstone Sound Space is Australia’s first permanent, urban surround-sound installation exhibition site, conceived and curated by Jesse Budel.

Located in Featherstone Place at the heart of Adelaide’s CBD, the Featherstone Sound Space draws inspiration from Melbourne-based sound artist Jordan Lacey’s concept of the Sonic Rupture, which are urban sound installations intended to improve the affective qualities of urban acoustic environments. As such, they are intended to positively impact quality of life in city environments, and engage the listener with new sonic possibilities not available in the typical monotony of urban soundscape activity.

Following a 2018 trial installation by Jesse in collaboration with BASEM3NT Creative Studios, Zephyr Quartet and Krix Loudspeakers, the Featherstone Sound Space has received funding from Arts South Australia to install permanent infrastructure and to develop a year long exhibition program.

In 2019-2021, the Space will feature 7 installations, three by sound artists Jesse Budel, Tristan Louth Robins and Jason Sweeney and four new commissions by Christopher Williams, Leah Blankendaal, Keira Simmons and Louis Bullock.

Currently not operating, further opportunities are being explored to continue the Sound Space’s activities into the future.

Featherstone Sound Space is made possible through Arts South Australia Project Grant Funding, and support from BASEM3NT Creative Studios and Krix Loudspeakers.

Previous Exhibitions

Keira Simmons - The Patterns Of Our Days

Any sense of time passing in a coherent way has become increasingly untethered this year. Weeks seem to compress, hours dilate and the second hand stands still, but nonetheless the year marches on, relentless. It’s uneasy. But with pockets of space to settle and rest. In The Pattern of Our Days, drifting blurred drones create a sense of sinking in. A sense of comfort in the feeling of the world shrinking inwards and expanding outwards from us. Unclear when we are, until the outside world suddenly wrenches us back into the present.

The bed of drones in this piece were created through a process of repetition, layering, and stretching, creating a too-comfortable environment to rest in. There are four half-hour sections in The Pattern of Our Days, Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night, each suspended in a different mode, punctuated by raw field recordings from places we cannot currently travel to. This piece aims to both reflect on a collective experience, and also create a space of comfort and peace in the city, which grows busier again by the week as we re-open.

For other work, see https://www.keirasimmons.com/

Leah Blankendaal - Skin Systems

Skin Systems (2020) starts the process of examining how we retain memory, and how that memory manifests on us physically.

How we wear our experiences on the body holds particular interest for me. 

Skin Systems begins a series of work in this area of research that I will be completing over the next five years.

The material is based on three repeated vocal phrases each of which stretch and transform. These phrases were recorded by Barossa-based South Australian artist Cara Boehm.

In traditional composition we quite often talk about the foreground, midground and background of a work. The analogy here between layers of sound and layers of skin seemed therefore a natural starting point.

More information about my practice can be found at www.leahblankendaal.com.

Louis Bullock - Streams of Encouragement/Value Streams

Streams of Encouragement/Value Streams (2020) brings together a set of commentaries surrounding self-defined values-based living.

The piece is important for our time, as one can find true direction and purpose through determining what they see as being valuable.

Considering this, we can strive towards what is our truth.

Values, from the Latin word valēre, ‘to be strong’, couldn’t be more fitting. By talking through our values, we strengthen them, come to understand others, and our being.

This piece combines interview/conversation excerpts collected/recorded from various people anonymously.

The piece collates these, bubbling up out of a murmuring stream, singular audio clips rising briefly, before falling into the stream. A bed of phone chatter, gentle melodies extracted from dial tones and pure wave shapes supports the voices — a reserved sea. 

Examples of Louis’ work can be found at: http://louisbullock.com.au/ and https://louisbullock.bandcamp.com/

Christopher Williams - Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather (2020) is composed from four-channel surround field recordings of birds on the NSW/Victoria border made in association with the Earth Canvas project, and bird imitations by primary schoolchildren made through the support of the National Gallery of Victoria.  My aim in this composition is to foreground the vocal dexterity of the children (and a few adventurous NGV staff members), as well as to allow the listeners to immerse themselves in this splendid chorus of birdsong.  I hope it will delight people of all ages.

Examples of Christopher’s work can be found at: christopherwilliams.com.au

Tristan Louth-Robins - Orbits

Orbits is a work that was composed in 2016 for the Adelaide City Council thoroughfare. The material for the composition is drawn from two repeated chord sequences played on a 1950s reed organ, with its sound routed to a series of electroacoustic processes which apply discrete frequency and amplitude modulations to the sound; in effect, subtly affecting aspects and texture and timbre. Since the two chord sequences are of different lengths, over the duration of the composition, the sequences gently drift out of phase with each other - resulting in phase relations. Hence, the poetic allusion in the title to that of orbiting bodies.

The work presented here is in an abbreviated form to that of the original; and perhaps more crucially, the dynamic quality of the work - that is, the volume that it is to be broadcast into the space - has been taken into special consideration. In its original reception, the work was broadcast into the Adelaide City Council thoroughfare at a volume where all of the compositions details (tone, timbre, texture) could be clearly apprehended by the general public. In its revised form, the volume at which the work is broadcast has been reduced significantly, so as to allow the the work to commingle and establish a state of dynamic equilibrium with other sounds within Featherstone Place, and those occurring on the periphery. In this respect, the scope of Orbits as a composition - in spite of being dynamically diminished - is expanded to accomodate the sonic activity of the immediate and surrounding urban environment. The audience is encouraged to spend time with the work in Featherstone Place to explore these varying states of equilibrium - between the work itself and the urban sonic environment.

Examples of the work can be heard at: http://www.tristanlouthrobins.com/work-orbits.html

Jason Sweeney - Siren Chant, Silent City

Integrating 52 x 30 second field recordings of different quiet spaces in the city of Adelaide and the voice of Caroline Daish, this work forms part of Jason’s ‘Quiet Ecology’ project and is a darker meditation upon the city as a site for reverence, silence, denial, secrets, unsettledness and variable spiritualities.