The culmination of my month-long residency at CURRENT was a 30-minute performance of my work, inside my studio.
Initially I was intending on a series of works, but instead I created one dual-screen work. One screen showed two superimposed maps of the area – one modern, one historical – turned into a digital autonomous instrument (created in Iannix), with sound created from birdsong recorded on Cantonment Hill, and the other was an audio-reactive photogrammetry scan (created in TouchDesigner) of one of the Rottnest Island pines on Cantonment Hill, accompanied by original and modified field recordings, and sonified data of groundwater storage depletion of the Gnangara Mound that runs across much of the Boorloo and Walyalup area.
While creating this piece, I thought about the changes in ecology from settler activity (referenced through mechanical and traffic sounds, and from the layering of maps), and how the combination of the area’s drying climate and increased susceptibility to fire has contributed to severely reducing the range of the Rottnest Island pine.