Birrarung Marr Ears: a video essay with virtual reality drawings, field recording and text

Susannah Langley

Birrarung Marr Ears is a drawn response to sounds of Birrarung Marr on the banks of the Yarra River, Naarm, in a three-dimensional virtual environment. The artwork responds to the provocation by Dr Roger Alsop “can you make an artwork expressing how you feel living on the lands of the murdered indigenous people”. (Taken from the exhibition brief for the group show ‘Here and Now’, Verwalterhaus Kulturkapellen, Berlin, 2023.)

The location chosen for the drawing was where I first heard of the extent of the atrocities committed against the Wurrundjeri & Boonwurrung peoples during the establishment of the settlement that became the City of Melbourne. It is also a location of considerable natural and built space beauty where the day-to-day experience of urban tranquillity belies its tragic history.

This video essay will be based around a 9-minute two-dimensional video recording made inside the three-dimensional drawing with written text added as intertitle screens.

The source video takes the viewer’s eye through the space of the drawing which contains figurative elements and a vocabulary of abstract drawn marks based on the sounds heard in a binaural audio recording taken from a stationary position on the Birrarung Marr. This recording can also be heard on the soundtrack of the source video.

The source video can be found here: https://www.drawntosound.work/birrarung-marr-ears

The text of the video essay will discuss the creation of this work and how I entered from a position of considering the history of the place and the events that happened there.

 

Susannah Langley is a visual artist and researcher whose studio practice is rooted in experimental drawing, interactive technology and sound, using unconventional media such as conductive materials, found objects, field recordings and virtual reality to explore ideas of listening to spaces. She has a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Melbourne and has contributed to the academic publication, Small Data Is Beautiful, 2023. She has collaborated on works that have appeared in group shows and festivals in Germany, South Africa and Australia, and engaged in artists’ residencies in Canada, India, Scotland and Australia.