Stray

Audiovisual Collaboration
Sarah Pirrie & Natasha Anderson

Stray seeks to create strange parallel environments – third ecologies –
somewhere between the framed cultural site of the gallery and
the demarcated ‘natural’ environment
These third spaces mirror our contingent framing of the ‘natural’

When we think the ecological thought, we encounter all kinds of beings that are not strictly “natural.” This isn’t surprising either, since what we call “nature” is a “denatured,” unnatural, uncanny sequence of mutations and catastrophic events: just read Darwin.
Timothy Morton

Hidden/Pulse Disturbance

Northern Centre for Contemporary Art
Darwin, Northern Territory
2013

Hidden/Pulse disturbance took the mangrove boardwalk at East Point, Northern Territory and mined the site for environmental, sociological and material information. Starting with the somewhat vertiginous architecture of the boardwalk, this work played with the ways ‘Nature’ is variously framed and disturbed by both human desire and activity – and in turn how nature itself assimilates and acculturates the effects of this human activity.

The audio is a transmutation of the mangrove swamp's sonic environment. Dealing with extreme tides and high salinity, these extraordinary trees have developed a unique way of 'breathing'. Using what could be thought of as a kind of straw, they breath through small sticks that poke up through the sand from submerged roots. The sonic field of this environment is remarkable: multiple random, dry, unlocatable clicks occur as tiny, almost invisible crabs pop in and out of the sand. Their density and placement waxes and wanes, manifesting in strange, unpredictable timings.

Also apparent are the large number of beer cans littered around in various states of decay. These become quite beautiful as they disintegrate and are assimilated. The official boardwalk, fencing and signage of this place frame it as apart. It is demarcated nature, a discrete environment to be preserved and observed; yet it takes in tides of rubbish — rhythmic, pulse disturbances of waste and human activity tied to the local social calendar and desires. This rubbish and damage is then mutated and used by the environment itself. Thus what is 'natural' / 'nature' is really denatured: a simulation of an idea that doesn't actually exist as in reality these sites are constantly disturbed and mutated.Considering this, I took a beer can from that particular swamp and used it to make a 4-channel audio work that simulated the field of short, dry crab clicks. These were distributed across the field of the installation in multiple small daisy-chained speakers.