The Second Annual Report of the Royal Meterological Society

an installation for
rusted photographs mounted to copper foil and sound

2004

The Second Annual Report of the Royal Meteorological Society
 was on display at Westspace for the Immersion exhibition
in Melbourne, Australia.

click on images for details
Immersion is one in a series of events curated by Melbourne based sound artist and academic Philip Samartzis that focuses on the theory and practice of surround sound and immersive environments. In 1999, the inaugural Immersion used the cinematic space as a site of performance to explore the potential of Dolby Digital surround sound to render and modulate sophisticated sound fields. In 2001, Immersion focused on the concert hall and the ability of a multiple speaker surround sound diffusion system to comprehensively choreograph acoustic and architectural space through live spatialisation. In 2004, Immersion will comprise a group exhibition at West Space and will be used to research the difficulties associated with sound presentations in gallery spaces in order to develop concepts and strategies that enable multiple artists using sound to simultaneously exhibit without negatively affecting one another. In order to investigate this objective, the three adjoining galleries that comprise West Space will each contain an installation in which sound plays a pivotal role. A special multi-speaker matrix will be installed throughout the gallery space to coordinate and distribute the sound design of each installation, converting West Space into one giant sound resonator.

In this way each sound design can be strategically placed anywhere in the gallery space, and mixed to minimize polyglotic incoherence. By its very nature, installation is a reconfiguration of acoustic and architectural space that enables incongruent relationships between sound and space to develop within a discourse that modulates between a series of diegetic and non-diegetic, intentional and random exchanges. It is the influence of acoustic and architectural space upon that which is expressed that is one of the most attractive features of installation. Also, the manner in which audiences navigate and interact with installation work is significantly different to the way they engage with sound work in other spheres of presentation in which elements such as form and time are highly regulated. The reduction of navigational intervention enables a total reconfiguration of the temporal and spatial aspects of compositional practice that is rarely found anywhere but the province of the art gallery.

Participating artists include Loren Chasse and Jim Haynes from San Francisco, as well as Martine Corompt, Rosemary Dean, Philip Samartzis and Jennifer Sochackyj.

- Dr. Philip Samartzis, 2004