Urban Runes
multi-channel sound installation with video for solo viewer
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Since escaping suburbia over 15 years ago I have predominantly lived on the edge of industrial zones around inner city Sydney. Though built for functionality rather than aesthetics, they offer their own kind of poetics if you look in the right places. I particularly love an industrial zone on a weekend when it is sleeping and deserted—like a ghost town.
Most recently I lived in Rosebery, a suburb of smash repairers and old factories. During the three years I lived there, nearly all the factories ceased production and were put up for sale: prime property for redevelopment into high rise apartments and homewares centres. Walking my dog every day I began to notice strange markings appearing on the walls of these shells of productivity. What were these mystical symbols? Messages from retrenched industrial deities?
We tend to associate a sense of spirituality with returning to nature, yet a large part of Australia's population lives in cities. Why do we not seek a spirituality in the environment that surrounds us with its clamour?
Consequently I have gathered these symbols together as a set of Urban Runes in which the fortune told is through sound. The sounds for each rune explores a particularly noisey field recording. No extra material is added, but by teasing and torturing the material I have endeavoured to draw out hidden voices in the machines, encouraging these industrial sounds to sing.
Each reading offers 3 runes (right to left): the first represents the present; the second is the action to be pursued; the third the result—the future. The sounds for each rune build on each other to create a complete sonic reading for your personal interpretation.
Of course there is a very simple and pragmatic explanation for these symbols. A tradesperson has exercised his or her creativity with a glue gun while sticking up various signs on the factory walls. But even so, what possessed them at the time?
Pose a question of the Urban Runes…
Concept, sound, images: Gail Priest
Max/MSP programming: Wade Marynowsky
Video editing: Sam James
This project has been developed in residence at Artspace as the second stage of the the exchange between Artspace and Tokyo Wonder Site.
During the first stage in residence at Tokyo Wonder Site, I developed
28 Songs for a City: Tokyo