Know Thy Neighbour Residency: Eduardo Cossio with City of Swan #1

Nov 6

Eduardo Cossio shares observations on sounds in Dayton for his Know Thy Neighbour #4 residency. In partnership with City of Swan, Eduardo held sound biking workshops that focus on listening as a prompt.

Three soundmarks in Dayton

Along the cycle path on Drumpellier Drive, along the brook, the frogs are calling in mating season. That was in September. Now it’s almost November and the frogs are gone. Their choir has been superseded by that of the crickets. Raspy, faint, more lulling. Listening through their softer call I notice sounds I didn’t hear before.

Vivid Chase at noontime. Everything is quiet. You could even hear the chink of cutlery. Vivid Chase in the afternoon is a different matter. People are home from work. Driveways are flocked with cars and engines are revving on Arthur Street!

Dayton Open Space on a Monday morning. No one in sight except for the lawnmowers circling the cricket field. Dayton Open Space on a Sunday afternoon, there are kids in the playground and talk in foreign language. I can speak in Spanish. Spanish is another foreign language here.

Sound Biking at Featherflower Park

Standing at the bridge at Featherflower Park armed with a shotgun mic – notice the military language of tech – I listen to the waterbirds. The coots, the swamp hens and the ducks go about their business unfussed by my presence. Among the passerines, the Australian warbler is the loudest here. More limited in range and sweeter is the call of the Gerygone whose name means ‘Born of sound’.

Listening with hydrophones underwater I hear the high frequency, laser-like sibilance of invertebrates. I also hear a low rattle; motor-like and rough yet melodic in phrasing. Could this be long-necked turtle? I have seen the C. oblonga swim here a couple of times. I cannot find audio samples of its vocalisation online except for a description of its “grunts; growls; blow bursts; staccatos; and drum rolls.”*

I hand my headphones to a man. His eyes open wide as he listens. I give my headphones to his young daughter and then to his young son. The boy like his father wears a turban. It’s the same reaction. They are listening beneath the water to sounds hitherto out of reach.

Instrumental listening and imaginative listening

I am fascinated by tools. As a musician I play on various instruments. As a photographer I can use lenses with different magnification. A bicycle is tool. The microphone is a tool. I think and type on the tool that is my laptop. These devices allow me to inhabit different kinds of awareness.

To handle the microphone like a dancer. Hurling it like a projectile onto distant things. I hear the Ibis’s wings as it prepares to fly. It soars towards Whiteman Park, above the traffic and the train line. Out of hearing range, I follow the bird fade into the sky, and my mind starts to trace a sonic invention of beating wings.

The Radio Ride

Radio Ride listens to the bodies listening. Radio Ride is not concerned with sound proofing. IT IS THE RADIO AMONG THE THINGS. Listening is our prompt. Listening guides our responses as we traverse the totality of sound in Dayton. We are playing off physical spaces and positing a sonic architecture that is imagined right there and then.

* Giles JC, Davis JA, McCauley RD, Kuchling G. Voice of the turtle: the underwater acoustic repertoire of the long-necked freshwater turtle, Chelodina oblonga. J Acoust Soc Am. 2009 Jul;126(1):434-43.

Images courtesy of the artist.

More about Eduardo’s project.

More about the Know Thy Neighbour #4: Gestures project.

More about the City of Swan.

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This project is supported by WA Government and the Commonwealth Government through Creative Australia.