A Sc(ore) for Listening

BACKGROUND In recent years there has been an ‘extraction turn’ in the fields of art and design. Recent multidisciplinary, creative research-based projects like ‘Copper Geographies’ (Ignacio Acosta, 2020), American Mine (David Maisel, 2021), and the on-going pedological projects initiated by the Critical Ecologies Lab, all focus on mining landscapes as a way think through the process and history of resource extraction and its long-term effects on economies, environments and societies. Few of these works focus on the unseen elements of place to explore the histories & processes of extraction through the process of listening. Inspired by the recent focus of resource extraction in contemporary art, A Sc(ore) for Listening engages a variety of speculative listening strategies and compositional mapping aesthetics to interrogate the unseen history of Queenstown’s mining past. CONTRIBUTION A Sc(ore) for Listening is a sound map that traces underground noises, frequencies and sound points (such as alarms and shift calls) of the historic Mt Lyle copper mine on the western frontier of lutruwita / Tasmania. The work utilized geographic surveys, archival images, community interviews and geochemical datasets to create a map that revealed the sonic legacies of the mine. A Sc(ore) for Listening moves beyond its function as an artwork to present a sensory mapping of Mt Lyle and its 7km decline into the earth, revealing unseen resonances, materials and histories to illuminate Australia’s oldest continually operating mining field.SIGNIFICANCEA Sc(ore) for Listening was commissioned by Australian architectural studio Mulloway for the exhibition ‘Unsettling Queenstown’ at the Australian Pavilion of the 18th International Venice Architecture Biennale. The work was included in the ‘Open Archive’ section of the exhibition which detailed a range of exemplars drawn from current architectural and art discourse and practice.