The Flood

BACKGROUND Experimental sonic practice, understood following John Cage (1973) as that which creates unknown outcomes, has a complex relationship with audio reproduction technologies. As David Grubbs (2014) argues, much work, such as that of Cage, is heard by audiences and scholars alike primarily through recordings, representations of performances that leave the results determined and repeatable, rather than indeterminate as intended. Simultaneously, theorists such as Tim Ingold (2007) have critiqued 'soundscape' as a concept used to understand sonic environments, arguing that sound is based in perception and is a medium rather than an object of experience. A soundscape is understood as external and representable while an environment is resistant to representation. Just like indeterminate works, then, environments exceed representations of them. CONTRIBUTION The Flood was a generative audiovisual installation. Presented in a shed, after dark it flooded the building with pink noise. Projections gradually filled the windows as sound poured out of them, giving the impression that the river was flooding into the building. Although the installation did, in some sense, reproduce the sound of the river, it primarily served to refer audiences to the river and the surrounding environment. It thus demonstrates how it is possible to produce sonic art that does not represent environments but rather engages listeners directly with them. SIGNIFICANCE The Flood was included in Bogong Centre for Sound Culture's PHANTASMAGORIA Festival and Exhibition, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, which ran from April 7 to 30 2017 in Bogong Village in Victoria's Alpine Country. The festival's opening weekend was attended by 200 people, with hundreds more visiting the exhibition across the Easter and ANZAC Day long weekends. Publicised on Alpine Radio and numerous media outlets in Melbourne, the event attracted audiences from across the King and Kiewa valleys as well as the city.