Sonic Hugs by This Sonic Life

SONIC HUGS

PRODUCED AND CURATED BY COLIN BLACK FOR THIS SONIC LIFE

CURATOR’S STATEMENT
COLIN BLACK

No matter where we live in the world, we all feel alone from time to time, some of us more than others, some of us to the point we can’t bear it anymore ... this collection of new works entitled Sonic Hugs is a reminder that we are not alone.

With this objective at hand, I invited nine of Australia’s most distinctive & esteemed artists to create original new works that express their interpretation of a “sonic hug.” At the time, I remember wondering, just how will these artists combine the ideas of “sonic” and “hug” into their new works? If we explore the word “hug” by itself, then we usually start to think of the following: hug … to anticipate a hug, to be hugged, to have been hugged, and that research has shown that a hug can reduce feelings of loneliness and the harmful physical effects of stress. A hug can also boost feel-good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin, the antidepressant hormone that reduces feelings of loneliness, controls anxiety and elevates mood. Psychologically, a hug builds trust, boosts self-esteem, and creates a sense of safety, creating a pathway towards a deeper connection.

But this was not just a hug, but a Sonic Hug … then I also remembered a quote from an interview I did for my PhD with Andrew McLennan about his experiences as an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio producer working with artists at The Listening Room program (and ABC Acoustic Arts Unit) where he explained, “But artists don’t always do expected things …”[1] In this context, McLennan is discussing the potential awkwardness between the public media programming directives and the artist’s desire for creative, uncensored, boundless possibilities. While with the Sonic Hugs collection, there are differences (e.g. there is no overarching government programming directive other than the request to compose a sonic hug), artists both delivered works that met and challenged my expectations, all of which I found sonically highly stimulating and was touched by. What emerged from this diverse mix and treatments of the subject matter is a multi-faceted creative exploration of embrace, connectedness, and community.

If we listen deeper into these individual new works, we can hear that with Colin Black’s Embosomed, we are exploring the light and shades of embrace, a reaching out for connection and fragility. With Cat Hope’s 7 Options (as performed by The Low Tone Orchestra), we are listening to how musicians empathise with each other during a live recording as they are “moving in and out of each other’s timbre,” in effect exploring varying degrees of sonic connections. Claire ‘Furchick’ Pannell’s Berjalan, amongst other things, reaches across cultural boundaries by using music as a type of universal language. Jim Denley’s Mixmaster Troposphere explores embracing the environment and place and is a sonic hug to the Aboriginal people (Wayilwan, Gamilaraay and Wiradjuri) who had previously gathered on the remote site in the Warrumbungle National Park where the work is recorded. Robert Sazdov’s “I Cried”Spasovden, electroacoustic compositional structure is based on “20-second sonic sections that aim to deliver 12 sonic hugs.” With David Chesworth’s Cohesion Calisthenics we are listening to the “personal experiences of embodied hugs and being in larger social gatherings, which we sometimes struggle to be part of.” In Eve Klein’s Mantra of Enfolding we imagine our first embrace and connection as a zygote in our mother’s womb. Stephen Adams brings us Close To Your Ears in which a single vocal gesture develops and is augmented with other elements to create intimacy, as Adams asks the question, “What is a sonic hug?” Finally, with Ros Bandt ‘s Sonic Hugs, we enter a personal autobiographical soundscape of tenderness that, as Bandt explains, “metamorphose into a new magical energy empowering love, kindness, sharing, community, co-operation and selflessness, a larger hug from nature and the cosmos.”

I now invite you all to open your ears to this new collection of works that affords vulnerability, speaks from different levels and dimensions and brings focus to the need for more interpersonal/social connectedness and cohesion.


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[1] Andrew Mclennan, interviewed by Colin Black, Sydney, August 20, 2008.

This Sonic Life focuses on exploring various dimensions of our sound world, from creative, environmental, investigative and healing.

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