Gail Priest. Juried Artist
SAE
SAE
Artist Statement
In_Listening_In is an ambisonic essay that uses the 360VR format for its dynamic, spatialised audio capacity in order to discuss the immersive nature of sound. It uses ficto-critical writing strategies that combine poetic texts, anecdote and theoretical reflection to explore and explicate how listening is an embodied, embedded experience in correlation to sound — an experiential unit I call “sonaurality”. This correlation complicates the notions of subjects and objects as independent entities so that sound cannot meaningfully be considered phenomenally, materially or conceptually without listening.
Flipping the visual focus of the medium, In_Listening_In eschews figurative visual narrative for an “visu-auditive” environment or atmosphere, to enable a stronger focus on listening (Chion 2016). The soundscape combines binaural field recordings adapted to an ambisonic environment and compositional elements developed to create a dynamic spherical soundworld in which the listener is always at the centre. In this way sound sensorially and affectively illustrates the concepts being discussed. Developed within the context of a practice-based PhD, the form is offered as an artwork as well as an alternate academic methodology and distribution format.
About the artists
GAIL PRIEST is a sound artist, curator and writer living on Dharug and Gundungurra land now known as Katoomba, NSW. Her practice encompasses performance, recording, sound design for dance and theatre, installation, curation and writing. She has exhibited at events and galleries including: Audioblast, Nantes, France; Experimenta Makes Sense Triennial of Media Art, touring nationally 2017-2021; ISEA2016 Hong Kong Juried exhibition; Werkleitz Festival, Halle, Germany; the Sonoretum, Kapelica Gallery, Slovenia; Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan; Artspace, SNO Gallery and Our Neon Foe, Sydney; and Blindside Melbourne. Recently she has been collaborating with Thomas Burless (as The Institute for Non-Empirical Results) creating the multi-room exhibition Five Self-vibrating Regions of Intensities for The Substation, Melbourne (2023), a sequel to the performance project performed at Liveworks 2019, Performance Space. She has recently undertaken a 3-month residency at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris through the Power Institute, Sydney University. She releases music on her own label, Metal Bitch as well as Flaming Pines and room40 and has toured the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Finland, Iceland and The Netherlands. She was associate editor and online producer of RealTime and writes fictively and factually about sound and media art. She received a PhD through University of Technology in 2023.
Credits: Gail Priest