Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Presented by Starlings Spatial Sound Collective in collaboration with SIAL Sound Studios, RMIT Creative and RMIT Gallery, Murmurations is a week-long spatial sound event at RMIT Melbourne’s new Black Box Multimedia Theatre, presenting a multiplicity of perspectives on the art of spatial sound. Murmurations is a rare opportunity to experience the physicality of sound as it inhabits space; moving, expanding and contracting; creating shapes, arcs and textures in the space that surround the listener. The event will allow public access to a vast array of spatially complex works from practitioners ranging from those newly experimenting with this realm to the leaders within the field.
On Sunday 7th October at 1pm listeners are invited to attend a spatial sound symposium to hear established artists Associate Professor Lawrence Harvey, Associate Professor Philip Samartzis, Dr Helen Dilkes & Nat Grant talk about their work and creative approaches to composition.

The symposium will be followed at 4pm by an opening listening session of 8-channel compositions by seminal sound artists Daniel Terrugi, Christine Groult, Bill Fontana and Hidlegard Westerkamp, presented courtesy of the RMIT Sonic Arts Collection.

In the evening, from 7pm onwards, emerging artists from the Starlings Spatial Sound Collective will perform new compositions for live sound diffusion over a 16-channel speaker array. Their works will expand on ideas of how spatial sound can be experienced - from classic electroacoustic composition and transformation, experimental music and shoegaze, and investigations of tension and release as sound interacts with space. The concert will showcase the Starlings' multifaceted spatial sonic practice for performance in unique and mesmerising ways.

Running alongside this event, on the 10th October at 10am, currently enrolled students in RMIT's SIAL Sound Studios Spatial Sound Composition and Diffusion (SSCAD) elective will diffuse their own compositions for the annual SSCAD concert. This is a chance to hear the next generation of emerging spatial sound artists spread their wings into a new space.

Featured non-Australian music: Daniel Teruggi, Christine Groult, Hildegard Westerkamp

Further information for this event is available or by email to starlingscollective@gmail.com

Featured artists

• Performance/sound art by Gillian Lever
• Performance/sound art by Lisa Rae Bartolomei
• Performance/sound art by Joshua Peters