Archive for January, 2020
Jan
2
2020
AWSRG into a new decade
I’d like to be upbeat and wish all our AWSRG friends a happy new year. But I just feel heartbroken at the moment. We have members who I know live in beautiful locations that are now in the path of the flames, and all I can do is hope for their safety.
There are so many wild places I’ve recorded in over the decades – Waratah Flat and Errinundra Plateau, where I first began recording – now gone. Forests near Mallacoota, where I recorded recently, also gone. Those ancient Gondwanan forests, koalas, gliders, sooty owls with their lovely trilling calls…
It feels too vast a tragedy to really comprehend.
I know members will feel similarly. I’d like to suggest that we each consider what the AWSRG can contribute to the social discussion that will evolve out of this catastrophe. Maybe, once the immediate situation subsides, we can arrange an online hookup to share ideas, or just our feelings.
Meanwhile – is this young magpie giving voice to the new Australia, or a requiem for the old?
(If you can’t view this video, try ABC Sydney on Facebook, that’s where it was posted)
Jan
1
2020
Latest Audiowings Journal + CD
Our journal team of Sue Gould (editor), Tony Baylis (CD editor and publishing) and John Campbell (proof reading) have excelled with the latest edition of Audiowings, which was posted out prior to Christmas.
Regular readers will note an unusual cover for this edition. The bird cages suspended above Sydney’s Angel Place are a sound sculpture by Michael Thomas Hill, called ‘Forgotten Sounds’. Several of the cages have weatherproof speakers installed which play calls of birds which would once have inhabited the location, with recordings supplied by our own Fred van Gessel.
Inside the journal, and as Sue notes in her editorial, honeyeaters form a recurrent theme. The vocalisations of noisy miners are examined by Lucy Farrow, Lloyd Nielsen describes the differing calls of two races of north Qld’s graceful honeyeater, and Sue writes on three of PNG’s meledectes honeyeaters. Honeyeaters also feature in the creative contexts of the multimedia performance of ‘Where Song Began’ by Anthony Albrecht and Simone Slattery, inspired by Tim Low‘s book, plus the aformentioned ‘Forgotten Sounds’ installation.