Fremantle’s Inner Harbour was transformed by The Port’s Call, an expansive sonic installation by Thomas Supple and Byron J Scullin. Beginning at dawn on the first day of the Biennale and continuing until dusk on Sunday 12 November, the arrival and departure of each large vessel was signalled by a bespoke soundscape.
With each passing vessel, a continually changing symphony of sound, using long-range acoustic technology, echoed throughout the Port. Stretching across a square kilometre, from the South Mole into Victoria Quay, the harbour became a living stage for this sound experience, attuned to the rhythms of industry.
This symphony also resounded throughout the ports at each sunset, a welcome, and a farewell to the sun as it clung to the horizon.
Combining human voices and subtle electronics, this auditory voyage invited listeners to consider anew the cacophony, movement and epic orchestra that is our global system of commercial goods.
About the
artists
Thomas Supple
Thomas Supple is an artist and curator working across contemporary music, installation and sound. Tom has curated programs for Mona Foma, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Victorian College of the Arts and Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Vivid Sydney, Perth Festival. He has been Senior Music Curator for Dark Mofo since the Tasmanian festival’s inception in 2013. His programming highlights there include world premiere performances from Nicolas Jaar (Against All Logic) and Antony & The Johnsons and Australian premieres from FKA Twigs, Jonsi & Alex, Einstürzende Neubauten, St Vincent and Tanya Tagaq. Tom has also contributed to the Dark Mofo visual arts program with Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang’s Chalkroom and American artist Matthew Schreiber’s monumental commission Leviathan. As an artist, Thomas has collaborated regularly with fellow Melbourne-based artists Hannah Fox and Byron Scullin. At the 2018 Perth Festival, the group presented Siren Song, a large-scale, outdoor sonic artwork that fills the skies of a city.
Byron J Scullin
Byron J Scullin is a Melbourne based practitioner that explores the technological representation and amplification of sound as well as its properties as a physical presence. Operating in an ambiguous space where sound transitions into noise, Scullin’s sonic environments offer an experience of mass and multiplicity, often representing attempts to hear the unhearable. After an interest in synthesis at a young age, Scullin was mentored by producer and composer Francois Tetaz. He has since been involved in almost all aspects of audio in his twenty-year career, contributing sound to feature films such as Wolf Creek, contemporary dance productions by Lucy Guerin, Gideon Obarzanek, and Lee Serle, and theatre works by David Chisholm, Chamber Made Opera, and Arena Theatre Co. He has created installations for museums and galleries – including Creation Cinema as part of First Peoples at the Melbourne Museum – and produced, engineered and mastered numerous Australian and international recordings. He also works as a sound educator at RMIT and Melbourne University. A prolific collaborator, Scullin has worked closely with audio-visual artist Robin Fox and video artist Daniel Crooks, as well as Australian composers Anthony Pateras, Marco Fusinato, and Oren Ambarchi. He’s also helped realise sound for notable international artists including Bernard Parmegiani, Tony Conrad, and Steven O’Malley.
