Floe by Philip Samartzis

Antarctica and its surrounding ocean are dominated by the presence of snow and ice, which, while responsive to local climate patterns and variations also influences global climate systems. About 98% of the Antarctic continent is covered by a sheet of ice averaging 1.6 kilometres thick comprising 90% of the world's ice and 70% of its fresh water. The sounds voiced by Antarctica's ice shelves, glaciers, icebergs and sea ice contests one of the great misconceptions about the continent. One based on the perception that it is a place delimited by a rigid and mute set of conditions. Yet concealed within the frozen veil of ice is a startling aggregation of sound to demonstrate how remarkably protean the continent actually is. 

Recorded in the Southern Ocean and Eastern Antarctica in 2010 and 2016. 

Originally presented in collaboration with Roland Snooks at NGV Triennial Extra in 2018. 

Floe is now available through NGVEveryDay. 

Acknowledgements
The Australian Antarctic Division, The Australia Council for the Arts, The Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, Creative Victoria, The National Gallery of Victoria, and the School of Art at RMIT University

Unheard Spaces by Philip Samartzis

Unheard Spaces comprises field recordings of Venice undertaken over a three-week period in February 2000. The recordings focus on the way sound permeates Venice and its attendant canals and lagoon to register an elaborate set of signifiers characterising the city. As one of the most recognisable places in the world, and the subject of countless artistic works, I am interested to know whether it is possible to portray it in new ways by focusing on specific aural cues expressed by spatial and material interactions and social dynamics. These interactions are sited within complex resonant and reverberant profiles which demonstrate how perversely mutable the acoustic environment can be. The pervasive presence of water inevitably shapes the encounter and navigation of this serpentine city and is integral to the unique acoustic ecology that operates there. Many of the sounds featured in Unheard Spaces are recorded under water using a hydrophone to afford new perspectives. Inspired by Death in Venice (1971) by Luchino Visconti, Don’t Look Now (1973) by Nicholas Roeg and The Comfort of Strangers (1990) by Paul Schrader, Unheard Spaces uses narrative to transport listeners through a series of spectral encounters resounding across narrow streets, and modulated by lugubrious piazzas and fetid canals that constitute this decomposing place.

Unheard Spaces was originally arranged and mixed in eight-channel surround sound at the Department of Room Acoustics at IRCAM for the La Costruzione del Suono Festival staged in Mestre, Italy in 2004. This stereo version is derived from the original eight-channel surround mix. Unheard Spaces is dedicated to the Venetian expatriates living in Mestre displaced by economic circumstances.

Acknowledgements
Assistant sound recordist: Madelynne Cornish
This project is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, and the Department of Room Acoustics at IRCAM

Captured Space by Philip Samartzis and Eric La Casa
Crónica, Oporto, Portugal

This digital download and cassette tape version of Captured Space is derived from a multichannel sound installation exploring two parallel environments comprising Kruger National Park — the natural and constructed. While the natural world of Kruger is wild and ferocious, the constructed world of roads and settlements is pedestrian, designed to keep visitors comfortable and safe from the daily struggle of life and death. From the vantage point of a car one can witness a remarkable habitat comprising a familiar cast of characters. Yet no matter how far or wide you travel, one cannot easily escape the spatial constraints of the car, or the high voltage electric fence encircling the tourist resort. While African animals are the mainstay of zoos around the world, at Kruger the animals are the vigilant keepers of an exotic mix of people confined to the smallest of spaces for their own self-preservation. Captured Space offers a kaleidoscopic experience of the South African wilderness solely through the transport and infrastructure used to facilitate access to a world inhabited by strange and menacing creatures. A spectral world where the soundscape is caustic, days radiant, and nights tenebrous. 

Associate Professor Philip Samartzis, RMIT staff profile