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Sonia Leber and David Chesworth
5000 Calls
Sydney Olympic Park 2000-ongoing
Programmed sound files, 80 Loudspeakers, 24 Channels
The work has subsequently been installed in Cardiff (2002) and Ljubljana (2003)
listen to excerpt (4')
5000 Calls is a large-scale multi-channel sound installation
installed throughout the Urban Forest, an extensive 4.5 hectare loose
grid of eucalyptus trees surrounding the Stadium Australia in Sydney.
The ever-changing soundscape utilises 5000 'charged' human vocalisations
uncovered from everyday life: the sighs, gasps and groans of work, pleasure,
sport, song and struggle. 5000 Calls particularly utilises the vocalisations
of people in extreme physical states.
The 'sense' of speech has been removed from these everyday recordings
to reveal a soundscape of 'human effort'.
We have long been fascinated with the acoustic texture and the dynamic
range of the human voice - beyond the speech content - its rhythms,
sounds, shape, tone and frequency. We are particularly fascinated with
the many 'proto-linguistic' vocalisations that people make. These are
the sounds we make prior to - or instead of - articulating through language,
where meanings are made without recourse to semantics or syntax. Where
communication is through the 'shape' of speech, rather than speech content.
The imposing architectural edifice of the Stadium Australia dominates
the site for the work. Around the exterior of the stadium, the tree-filled
Urban Forest functions as a threshold, traversed by crowds of up to
100,000 people at a time, often in excited, anticipatory states.
The artwork is designed as an ever-changing 'crowd system', constantly
changing over time. It reflects the many types of acoustic phenomena
which arise from large crowds, in a changing chorus of sound created
from a large numbers of individual sources.
A customised computer program allows the different calls to interact
with each other at different times, heard through the 80 speakers discreetly
placed around the site. The work is supple and shifting as the different
vocalisations 'rub up' against each other in different ways, in different
densities and patterns of distribution.
As you move through the Urban Forest you hear short fragments of many
voices captured while performing numerous tasks - from the calls of
weightlifters, gymnasts, footballers and cricketers to fragments of
Vietnamese river chants and the singing of Aboriginal children. The
charged atmosphere of the Maori haka is there, along with the voices
of stockmen herding cattle and the slow breathing of a dancer. The soundscape
portrays a sonic inscription of the body: stressing, straining, singing,
exclaiming.
Commissioned by the Sydney Olympic Park Public Art Program to be part
of the permanent built environment, it can be heard daily during daylight
hours.
NAWIC 2000 Arup Award for Achievement in Design
‘Remarkable’
Philippe Régnier, The Art Newspaper No. 105, London, July 2000
‘Public art too often devolves into compromised cliché as
vested interests ‘negotiate’ the outcome. 5000 Calls survives
this process and demonstrates a role for new media arts in this area.’
Paul Brown, RealTime No. 36, Sydney, April 2000
‘5000 Calls...comes as a complete surprise both in its functioning
and in what it says about the inclusive possibilities for the creation
of public art in highly visible venues...
It utterly transgresses presumptions of the monumental generally associated
with privileged outdoor sites... 5000 Calls literally haunts the site,
blurring the delineation of public and private, presence and absence,
celebration and distress.’
Alex Gawronski, Real Time No. 40, Sydney, December 2000
‘5000 Calls is at once the most evocative and evasive of all the
works here.’
Felicity Fenner, Art in America, May 2001
Grrr! Ahh! O-o-o!
C'mon-c'mon!
Mmm... Sshh!
Oh! Oi!
Unnh! Oof!
Ow! Gahhhh!
Errrr!
Go-Go-Go!
Hey! N-n-no!
aaaaaaah...! AAAHHH!
mm, nuh!
Aah! AAAHH!
Oo, oo-!
Gah! ah!
OHH!
Oooo! aah!
pah! shhh!
nuh...oh!
eeerr! ooh...
oh..aah..!
Urrr-ah!
Yeee-oh!
Pphh!
wrrrow..oo...!
ha-ha-!
ooh-ohh-!
5000 Calls is built up around 5000 voice fragments recorded by the artists
in real world situations, such as...
Sound Sources
AUCTION / Cyclic appeals of auctioneers
BREATHING EQUIPMENT / Assisted breathing using aqualung, hospital respirator
CATTLE HERDING / Male and female stockmen / Central Queensland
CHILDBIRTH / Mothers' labour at the moment of birth
CHILD IN BATH / Imitating aeroplanes, cars and ships
DANCING / Tentative breathing while rehearsing a new work
DEAFBLIND SIGNING / Spontaneous vocalisations while communicating in
sign language
DEFENCE FORCES / Parade calls, artillery drill, commando unit
DIGGING A WELL / Hollering calls of a work chant / Bangladesh
DOG OBEDIENCE SCHOOL / Short commands to animals; sounds of encouragement
FIRST BREATH / Kane Myers and Honor Enright-Miller / Recorded by their
fathers
HEALING SOUNDS / Taoist healing sounds for lung, kidney, liver, heart
and spleen
HOTEL / Overheard adult laughter and play / Kings Cross
MARKETPLACE / Intoned, rhythmic invitations to come and buy / Victoria
Market
MORNING PRAYERS / Holy man chanting Hindu mantras on the Ganges / Varanasi,
India
MOURNING / Woman mourning outside hospital / Kampot, Cambodia
PAINTING A PORTRAIT / Sounds of thinking, gasps and laughter
PROTEST / Students protest against uranium mining; Rally for Aboriginal
land rights
REHABILITATION HOSPITAL / Stroke patients and their therapists
RENOVATING A KITCHEN / Sounds of thinking during heavy labour
SHEEP MUSTER / Vocal signals and whistles to sheep dogs
STREET CALLS / Calls from the streets of Brooklyn, Sydney and New Delhi
STUDENT PARTY / Late-night shouts heard over the fence
TIDAL WAVE DESCRIPTION / Survivors imitating the sound of the tsunami
/ Papua New Guinea
YOGA / Slow meditative breathing and chanting
Sports Sources
ATHLETICS / Track & Field at Australian Institute of Sport (AIS)
AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE / Grand Final crowd, Essendon v Carlton
BASEBALL / U/14’s Grand Final
BASKETBALL / Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Women's and Men's teams
BEACH VOLLEYBALL / Women's World Open, Italy v US at Melbourne Park
CRICKET / International Ashes series, Sheffield Shield and suburban
matches
DRAGON BOAT RACING / Footscray Canoe Club on Maribyrnong River
GRADE ONE THREE-LEGGED RACE / Caulfield South Primary sports day
GYMNASTICS / Coach's calls / Australian Institute of Sport, Welsh Institute
of Sport
HOCKEY / Welsh Women's Hockey Team, Cardiff
KICK BOXING / Fitzroy Stars Aboriginal Community Youth Club gym
LAWN BOWLS / Doncaster Bowling Club
NETBALL / AIS Netball team
RUGBY LEAGUE / Sydney City Roosters in training: rob the nest, defence
shuttle drill
RODEO / Yeehah's from the crowd / Melbourne Park
ROWING / AIS Women's Pairs, Women's 8s, cox's calls
RUGBY UNION / Australian schoolboy’s state teams championships
SKATEBOARDING / Teenage skateboarders
SOCCER / U/12s, U/8 coach losing her voice, Falcons women’s team
SOCCER WORLD CUP QUALIFIER / Australia v Iran, 1997
TENNIS / Australian Open 1999
VOLLEYBALL / AIS Women's and Men's teams
WATERPOLO / State selection trials for Victorian Women's team
WEIGHTLIFTING / Kenyan call to give strength / Oceania team
WRESTLING / Freestyle and Greco-Roman / Oceania team in training
Song Sources
ABORIGINAL / Children from Darlington Public School, Sydney
ARABIC / Highly ornamented melodic lines / Ghazi Nassouh
BUDDHIST / Deep-voiced harmonic chanting / Dalai Lama's Guyto Monks
of Tibet
BULGARIAN / Exclamatory calls in song to a female leader hiding in the
hills / Silvia Entcheva
CAMBODIAN / Buddhist group chanting in village
CHILEAN / Love songs with quivering vocalisations / Hernan Flores
CHINESE / Call to lover on a nearby mountain / Dong Xiao-Meng
DERVISH / Chanting / North Sudan
GAELIC / Slow airs in the Sean-nós singing style / Maurice Scanlon
GEORGIAN / Working songs, healing songs, rain call / Nino Tsitsishvili,
Joseph Jordania
GREEK ORTHODOX / Call and response from the Easter Service / Father
Dimitropoulos
INDIAN AND SRI LANKAN / Improvisations on traditional ragas / Narmatha
Ravichandhira
ISLAMIC / Melismatic call to prayer / Belal Assaad, Preston Mosque
JEWISH / Song for Yom Kippur / Rabbi Lubofsky, St Kilda Synagogue
KIRIBATI / Micronesian chant accompanying a war-like stick dance / Banaba
Island
MAORI / Menacing vocal display of the Haka / Michael Tuffery
PAPUA NEW GUINEAN / Funeral song celebrating life / Olive Tau Davis
RUSSIAN / Song asking the frost to spare the life of a man and his horse
/ Zulya Kamalova
SLOVENIAN / Songs about separation and returning home / Dusan Kobal
SOUTH AFRICAN / Joyful, rousing work chants / Valanga Khoza
TARTAR / Love songs with birds, berries, nightingales and butterflies
/ Zulya Kamalova
TUVALUAN / 'Speech/song' of Polynesian calls to ancestors, challenge
calls / Keleta Avene
VIETNAMESE / Boat person's river chants / Dang Kim Hien
WELSH / Song calling out the names of all that can be seen from the
hilltop / Julie Murphy
WEST AFRICAN / Fertility song, harvest workers' song / Epizo Bangoura
Technical Processes
The recording process involved us travelling to over 100 varied locations
to make unique recordings of everyday activities. It was important for
us to capture each voice 'close up' with as much proximity as possible.
To achieve this we often used radio microphones which we attached to
people involved in a wide a range of pursuits, such as athletes leaping
high into the air during the high jump, soccer players weaving their
way across a sports field and stroke patients at a rehabilitation hospital,
struggling to re-learn how to walk.
We digitised these large chunks of location recordings, for the painstaking
process of isolating the short expressive vocalisations that we were
looking for – vocalisations which often occur in-between the words
(gasps, sighs, different weights of breath) and the involuntary vocalisations
made as a result of physical action.
We used a number of techniques to then further refine these short moments,
isolating the individual voices from the often noisy and complex acoustic
environments of the original recordings.
It was important for us not to tamper with the original qualities of
the voices for this is what makes them so compelling. We tried to remove
only the extraneous sounds, to bring the listener right up close to
the soundmakers, revealing an almost uncanny sense of clarity.
The core of the delivery system is a PC workstation where each of the 5000 individual vocalisations is stored as an
individual sound file. Selected sound files can be instantly accessed
and sent to particular loudspeakers to form part of the combination
of ‘crowd events’ at any particular time.
The system is programmed to firstly select and then deliver particular
groups of sound to the 80 loudspeakers discreetly distributed through
the 4.5 hectare site. To help achieve this, 24 individual channels of
cabling – totalling some 5 km – were built into the site.
The system was designed in conjunction with Resonant Designs, the company
involved in developing the specialist software. Krypton Audio Server
[c. Isotope] allows complex programming of the order and distribution
of sound files. This combines with AutoMate [c. Isotope] which allows
programming of the delivery of the sound groups.
Much of the programming occurred on site, where we made careful adjustments
over several week-long periods while listening to our own developing
real-time crowd of voices.
5000
Calls Cardiff - 5000
Calls Ljubljana
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