Jungle Dreamscape by Diana Chester
Jungle Dreamscape: A Soundscape, was developed for a collaborative exhibition with Sydney born visual artist Lisa Hoelzl. The installation was installed at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney in October 2018. Lisa created a world of ceramic totems and birds, a work inspired by Henri Rousseau’s whimsical painting, The Dream.
The Soundscape is a two movement piece created entirely from recorded sounds. These include bird calls of native Australian birds the Azure kingfisher, Swift parrot, Yellow Tailed Black cockatoo, Variegated bee-eater, Dollar bird, Slender-billed creeper, White Dove, and a Magpie. Recorded sounds also include processing sounds of metal work, welding, cutting, and metal brushing, as well as post kiln ceramic tinging sounds that came from the pieces in the exhibit. Mimi Brunsdon is the featured pianist who I recorded playing Debussy’s Prelude #10 on two different pianos. And finally, there are recorded excerpts made from a recording of a vinyl record of Sterling Holloway’s reading of Rudayard Kipling’s, “The Elephant’s Child.”
Diana Chester is a media artist, educator, and scholar. Her work, which often invites both collaboration and audience participation, uses multiple mediums including sculpture, photography, printmaking, sonic art, and musical composition. Chester’s organizing principle is focused on human response to the complexities of culture. By manipulating visual and sonic expression in new ways, she invites audiences to explore social relationships they might not otherwise consider. Diana is also preoccupied with the fusion of theory and practice in pedagogy. Her work in the classroom exists in a constant state of disciplinary hybridity and aims to continually push the blurry boundaries of the applied/scholarly pendulum in teaching and research. Diana is a Lecturer in Media Production at the University of Sydney.
Katharina Schmidt
Katharina Schmidt is a musician based in Berlin. After years of playing drums and piano in various bands, her solo work is influenced by indie, experimental, and improvised music. Exploring interests in storytelling, sonic topographies, and generative techniques, her music uses electronics, field recordings, and self-built interfaces alongside acoustic instruments. From sonifications to lullabies, her work is poised between formal experimentation and narratives cued by literature and pop culture, and can be heard in installations, film music, and radiophonic pieces, as well as upcoming releases on labels such as Flag Day Recordings, Slaapwel Records, and Focused Silence. Katharina holds a master’s degree in Sound Studies from the Berlin University of the Arts and hosts resident shows at Cashmere Radio and SVS Radio.
