2023
Environments 12, 2023 Listening environment: 8-channel sound installation, 35 minutes (looped); turntable, vinyl record and record sleeves.
Researched, written and produced: Sean Dockray, James Parker, Joel Stern. Voices: David Chesworth, Jasper Dockray, Jenny Hickinbotham, Roslyn Orlando, Francis Plagne, Catherine Ryan, and their clones. Design: Stuart Geddes. Commissioned for: WILD HOPE: Conversations for a Planetary Commons, RMIT Design Hub.
‘Is it difficult to reproduce the sounds of nature?’
Environments 12 is a new, speculative addition to the once-popular Environments series: a sequence of 11 records released between 1969 and 1979 that anticipated a mass-market in mood-altering nature recordings. The work takes the form of a multi-channel audio installation, presenting a world in which the environment itself has been updated. In this world, the reproduction, synthesis and management of soundscapes has become ubiquitous and planetised. Loudspeakers and microphones are laced through the biosphere, all in the name of a cybernetic ecology.
Unfolding across a series of historical, contemporary, and speculative scenes, the work is narrated by an ensemble of vocal performers and their generative voice clones. Together, this more-than-human chorus tells and retells stories of ‘psychologically ultimate seashores’, reef lullabies, natural symphonies designed for zoo enclosures, and large language models for whales and crows. A collection of songs and fables recovered from the ruins of a future history.
Link to sleeve art and liner notes.
_Environments_2012_2023._Wild_Hope_Exhibition_RMIT_Design_Hub._2023._Photo_by_Tobias_Titz_2/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Presentations:
- Wild Hope: Conversations for Planetary Commons, RMIT Design Hub, 14 August - 29 September 2023.
- Environments 12 LP launch, Earthly Futures Studio, Montreuil, Paris, 18 June 2025
- Environments 12 LP launch, After 8 Books, Paris, 7 June 2025
- Environments 12 LP launch, Q-O2, Brussels, presented by Futura Resistenza, 16 June 2025
- Environments 1 LP launch, Ephemera Festival at Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 14 June 2025
- Environments 12 LP launch, Deep Assignments at Apiary Studios, London, 2 June 2025
Reviews:
- Wild Hope, Audrey Pfister, Art + Australia, 11 October 2023.