Piped Music is an ongoing audio series, with a listening station located in the Physics Room’s toilets. The audio works are triggered to play at any random point upon the unsuspecting visitor entering the room. The programme for 2002 highlights the infinite array of approaches that can be taken within the medium of sound - from sampling found-sounds or editing recorded broadcasts, to the computer manipulation of recorded organic sounds.

Piped Music was initially an initiative of the Oblique Trust

10 April - 03 May
‘Good Morning Mr DeMone’
Kn O (Canada)

The soundtrack to an imaginary B grade horror movie, this piece records a day in the life of our hero Mr. Robert S. DeMone, chairman and CEO of the Royal York Hotel. Mr DeMone wakes up on March 21, 19XX at 7am to the sound of the morning radio (National Public Radio) just like he’s done for the past 25 years. Or has he?

Using a recording of talkback radio, Harper has edited the conversations of radio host Bob and his late-night callers into a playful little dance of fumbled verbal exchanges and missed punchlines. Set to a cheerful, semi-funky shuffle, the four protagonists juggle dud gags back and forth, never grasping them yet never quite letting them drop.

Due to an emerging interest in sounds from inside things, McCallum has recorded sounds in caves around the Port Hills and inside a plastic road cone. The recordings have been deconstructed by various means and reassembled into new forms, exploiting the spaces to give character to the sound sources used - creating "theoretical techno" out of organic found-sounds.

‘Boil’ is a remixed version of the sound component in Venis’ performance piece ‘Southern Woman’s Dream kitchen’. Sampling pots boiling, water running and washing dishes, Venis transforms her kitchen appliances into instruments. In ‘Boil’ we witness mundane found-sounds mixed together to become a surprisingly catchy dance tune.

This recording revisits a minutes silence observed in respect of the lives lost in terrorist attacks in New York, at the MCG before kick off at the AFL Grand Final on September 14 2001. The track is looped, trapping the listener into the suspended moment of anticipation and tension. However the moment is broken early when an impatient supporter breaks the silence to cheer for his team.

This piece has been constructed from a collection of discarded audio cassette tape pieces - those curly bits that get stuck in your car stereo! Gathering tapes from various contributors around the country, O’Kane gets back to the basics of cut-and-paste, creating new sounds from an all but obsolete sound medium.