Sounding Batman Park

BACKGROUND Combining urban design and public art fields, 'Test Sites' is a City of Melbourne Public Art commission in which participating artists, Jordan Lacey and Catherine Clover, tested new ideas and processes in a city context. 5 days were spent in Batman Park testing its sound environment to find correlations between the voices of urban birds and infrastructure sounds. Building on the concept of aviary-infrastructure interconnections by artists such as Bernie Krause and Sally McIntrye, this research investigated potential site-specific installation and composition works by seeking new approaches to site-specific conditions. The key outlet for the work is a City of Melbourne featured website. The temporary site can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/PublicArtMelbourne/posts/1758185937738740 CONTRIBUTION Through a real-time voicing of the environment, artists were able to interpret performatively the connection between bird song and infrastructure sounds. This contributes to artistic domains an interpretation of recent quantitative research into the impact of infrastructure sounds on birdsong, particularly by leading to new thinking about the interconnection of the listening body and urban soundscapes in relation to site-specific art. New research opportunities have emerged from the work, including Clover and Lacey being invited by RMIT's C.A.S.T. to participate in the forthcoming Wonderment Walk Project. SIGNIFICANCE Audiences could observe and hear two Sound-researchers investigating the acoustic qualities of space. 'Test Sites' allowed the City of Melbourne to consider new non-visual ways to encounter and respond to space. The City of Melbourne Public Art Program is a highly esteemed competitive platform for artist-based researchers. The City of Melbourne will soon publish the work on the following website: http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/arts-and-culture/art-outdoors/public-art-melbourne/test-sites/Pages/test-sites.aspx.