Frances Barrett: Meatus Exhibition Kit

worm divinations (segmented realities) 2020 is a sonic composition created by artist Frances Barrett in collaboration with Brian Fuata and Hayley Forward. The artwork was developed as an immersive sound experience, designed to envelop the audience and respond directly to the unique dimensions of ACCA’s largest gallery space. The artwork is mixed on the IOSONO 3D spatial audio rendering system and presented through a series of 37 Yamaha loudspeakers and subwoofers.  

The composition is based on a series of modulated vocal performances sequenced into segments. The structure of the work replicates the segmented body of a worm, beginning in the mouth and moving through the body. At different points throughout the art making process, each of the artists’ took turns to inhabit the role of the worm. As such, the worm can be seen to represent the artists’ conceptual approaches to their mode of collaboration. In a process not unlike composting, the artist-worm’s role was to ingest the raw material of text, sound, movement and score, and process it through performance, improvisation and listening. The worm-artist then transformed this raw material into ‘compost’ through a process of transformation, effectively consuming the raw material and spitting or expelling it from their bodies to create a work that is non-linear. The raw material digested by the artists included a range of external literary and artistic sources–including twentieth-century authors such as William Burroughs, and Kathy Acker, queer theory, avant-garde French theatre director and dramaturge Antonin Artaud and experimental bands such as Throbbing Gristle. 

Discussion questions

• What is sound; how is it made; Can we feel the touch of sound? 
• Sound is an essential component of this artwork. Why would an artist be interested in exploring sound? List some reasons you can think of. 
• How does sound get inside your body? What role does listening play in relation to sound and in understanding this artwork?
• Create/Evaluate/Analyse If you had to create a non-visual artwork, what sense/s would you choose to work with (touch, smell, hearing, taste and proprioception {spatial awareness}), and what form would it take?

Debris Facility Pty Ltd., is a corporate entity/artist whose artistic contribution to Meatus takes multiple forms. Titled EarWorm 2020, their work includes the earring worn by Brian Fuata in the ‘hero image’ used to promote the exhibition; physical tattoos on the ear of the artist; documentation of these tattoos which appear as vinyl decals in the ACCA bathrooms; small metal sculptures magnetised to the entryways to the gallery spaces; a feature in the exhibition catalogue; and a sound installation in the ACCA foyer. EarWorm 2020 functions as a ‘parasitic’ intervention into Meatus, occupying the gaps and hidden spaces within the exhibition and ACCA’s internal architecture. Debris Facility Pty Ltd is interested in ideas related to traces, mark making and vermiculation. Vermiculation is the mark-making of a worm’s movement, as well as an architectural term used to describe wavy mark-making on the surface of brickwork. The artist/entity’s work for Meatus creates both sonic and visual vermiculation throughout ACCA, puncturing the exhibition’s framework, causing holes and openings where both the sonic and material might pop up or leak out unexpectedly. 

The idea of the earworm is also a central component of Debris Facility’s sonic composition in the foyer.  An earworm is a fragment of music or sound that gets stuck in the listener’s brain and loops around over and over. It can be an addictive, annoying or pleasurable sound that remains hooked within the mind of the listener long after it has sounded, like a catchy song that you can’t get out of your head. Taking inspiration from this phenomenon, the artist’s alarm-like sounds in the ACCA foyer seek to burrow into a listeners’ ears disrupting the other artists’ sound compositions.

Discussion questions

• Have you experienced an earworm before? Describe it? What was the sensation? 
• Why do you think an artist would  be interested in disrupting a gallery/institutional space
• What is a parasite? What do you think the artist means when they describe their installation for Meatus as a ‘parasitic intervention’?

Commissioned for this exhibition, Body Scanner 2021 is a continuation of composer Nina Buchanan’s ongoing investigation into the relationships between humans and technology. Buchanan is an artist, electronic musician and composer who creates emotionally-charged sonic environments for listeners to engage in deep listening that incorporates both personal and collective experiences. The artwork explores the potential for music and sound to allow for the ‘metabolising’ of subconscious emotional experiences –sound as a way to process feelings. The flexible concept of body scanning may refer to several embodied experiences including a meditation and mindfulness practice; health, fitness and/or medical screening; and a security screening process in which the body’s internal structure becomes visible. Through the form of a multi-channel sound installation, the artwork Body Scanner sonically explores the multiplicity of what a ‘body scan’ can be and the emotional affects sound may invoke within the body. Buchanan draws from many references such as science fiction writers Octavia Butler, and Ursula Le Guin; electronic music subgenres such as IDM (intelligent dance music) and glitch; and the instinctual, playful compositional approach of synthesiser pioneer Suzanne Cianni. 

The composition is designed to move through lush soothing ambient sounds before building towards purposefully anxiety-inducing tones and rhythms. Body Scanner uses the three-dimensional aural field (sound which envelops the audience), complex polyrhythms (simultaneous combinations of contrasting rhythms in a musical composition), and shifting tempos and phasing. Buchanan’s work seeks to disorient the audience; she is interested in disrupting the audience’s sense of autonomy and agency over their own body as the sound pans up and down the gallery space. 

Discussion questions

• What feelings and thoughts does the artwork title Body Scanner evoke in you? 
•  Describe an embodied experience you have had–a time you have been attuned to your body and its sensations as well as changes and subtleties. 
•  The artwork explores music and sounds ability to support the ‘metabolising’ of subconscious emotional experiences. Do you think the ‘metabolising’ of subconscious emotional experiences through engagement with sound and music’ is possible, why/why not? 
• Why would an artist/ musician be interested in disorientating the audience? What elements combine in this work to create this effect?