Listen to a Starfish : Soundwalks

Join Diana Chester and Damien Ricketsen for a beach soundwalk during low tide, and explore the marine life of the Newcastle Coast using specialised underwater listening devices. Moving in small groups, guided by Damien a composer, and Diana a sound artist, participants will make their way across the rock shelf, and toss underwater microphones into rock pools, moving water, and onto the ocean floor to uncover sounds of the underwater sea world. Based on the methods used to create the sensory sound installation for New Annual, Listen to a Starfish, you will be amazed by the sounds you might hear, such as small fish, starfish, molusks, seaweed, plant life, and even the sounds of the ocean tide from beneath the ocean floor. Come prepared to be amazed by the cacophony of sounds made by the living world in our oceans. 
 

DURATION
45 minutes 

SENSORY AND CONTENT WARNINGS
Recommended for ages 8+. Children aged between 8-16 require adult supervision during the soundwalk. 

AUDIENCE ADVICE
Meet at the main entrance to Newcastle Ocean Baths to begin your soundwalk. Participants need to be on their feet for the duration of the soundwalk (45 minutes). The walk will take place on the beach rock platform and footwear may get wet. Participants may choose to walk barefoot or wear footwear suitable for these conditions. In the event of extreme wet weather or unsafe ocean conditions this event will be postponed. 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 
Diana Chester is an internationally recognised digital media artist, who uses sound to explore more-than-human dimensions of understanding existence in the time of the Anthropocene. Their work uses sound, animation, and photography in conversation with ethnographic and archival materials, to convey ideas of pasts, presents, and futures. Driven by an intense desire to re-presence story and memory, Chester uses personal narratives as a method to voice to the world around them. To do so they fluidly explore multilingual, inter-environmental, and data generated soundscapes, finding rhythmic cadences and synergies from the natural world, and placing them in conversation with visual materials to compose “listening stories” that compel humans to think more deeply about inclusive ideas of place and belonging.

Damien Ricketson is a composer and academic at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Ricketson’s visceral and multisensory works explore the relationship between vibration and the body and listening beyond what is heard by the ears. Ricketson was the Co-Artistic Director of Ensemble Offspring (1995-2015), a unique arts company dedicated to adventurous new music, and the Program Leader of Composition and Music Technology at the Sydney Conservatorium (2015-2019). Ricketson has received numerous awards including the international Music Theatre Now Prize (2018); ‘Work of the Year’ in vocal/choral and instrumental categories in the Art Music Awards (2014 & 2019) in the Art Music Awards; and represented ‘Oceania’ in the Tokyo World Festival.