The remaking of things

Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
NGV commission for Melbourne Now 2023
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Friday 24th March – Sunday 20th August, 2023

So far, we’ve shared what we are making, and a little of where the individual components have come from, but we’ve not really touched upon what you will hear when you look at the collage, or rather when you walk through it, the forest, in the gallery.

The soundtrack is comprised of audio recordings from different colonies to the Grey-headed flying fox camp on the Birrarung that we know and help care for (as part of Friends of Bats and Bushcare and the soft release program). As the camp along the Birrarung is an urban camp, any recordings from this area tend to feature a great deal of ‘us’ noise. All the human bits. Our traffic roaring, our sirens blaring, our conversations in the daytime as we cycle, run, and walk beneath the canopy of grooming, squabbling, snoozing flying foxes. Our close proximity. Our encroachment. So, for The remaking of things, we have called upon sounds from remote camps like those at Tallowwood Ridge, Dorrigo, NSW. Working with Angus Kemp, sound production, we have a collage of sounds, using various recordings courtesy of Tim Pearson, to create the feeling of twenty-four hours in a Grey-headed flying fox camp comprised into twenty-four minutes.

We have used sound recorded on the edge of a gully, inside the camp area, miles from our anthropogenic noise. Recorded in the early afternoon, within a 5,000-strong camp, you can hear general chatter of the Grey-headed flying-foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus). “The higher pitched “hiccupping” sounds are from females, behavioural context uncertain,” explains Tim’s notes. “Also evident are the sounds of bats flying between trees in the camp — the heavy thump of wingbeats”. And no soundtrack would be complete if it did not include the glorious deep swoosh of wings.

This is woven with another recording from the middle of the day on Bellingen Island, Bellingen, NSW. Once more, the recording is taken from the heart of the camp. You can hear the distinctive call of the Eastern whipbirds, and the occasional sound of a flying fox travelling between the trees.

By the evening, when the flying foxes are waking up, stretching, and getting ready to fly out, you can hear “a brief squawk of complaint — this is usually because a neighbour has stretched a wing out and hit them”. You can also hear a White-bellied sea eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) and a Ninox boobook duet, because a healthy habitat is one that is biodiverse. And so our forrest includes possums, emus, koalas, (gold) kangaroos, and kingfishers.

During the nighttime, recorded this time at Ku-ring-gai Flying fox reserve, Gordon, NSW, from the middle of an occupied area of camp, “the bats have long gone on their nightly foraging, so what’s left is anthropogenic noise, insects, and frogs”.

Also from Ku-ring-gai Flying fox reserve, Gordon, from file name Pups_in_the_camp_at_night.wav; the particulars: equipment: 2xWildlife Acoustics SMX-IIon aWildlife Acoustics SongMeter SM2+; sampling rate: 44kHz, 16-bit; you can hear the pups that have been left safely at camp (in crèche trees or nursery trees) while the adults fly out to forage. “They call back and forth to each other, and practice flapping and flying. You can hear the occasional heavy wingbeats of an adult — there always seems to be one or two supervising”.

The pre-sunset chorus of insects and frog calls, also from the Ku-ring-gai Flying fox reserve “then tracks the slow influx of flying foxes into the camp”. As the flying foxes fly in, “there’s initially just the occasional squabble, but as more and more of the animals come back to the camp, the interactions and noise levels increase dramatically”.

The morning sounds are comprised from a different camp again, Lachlan Swamp, Centennial Park, Sydney, NSW. The original recording was taken with the majority of the camp in front of the microphone, on the 24th of January, 2021, from 5am; equipment: Rode NT-SF1 Ambisonic microphone. Sound Devices MixPre-6II recorder; sampling rate: 48kHz, 32-bit float. A-format. Pre-sunrise is the noisiest time of day in the camp. “The majority of the animals have flown in, although there are still some late arrivals. Everyone however is grooming, socialising, fighting for space in the trees, the mothers are trying to find the pups they have left in the camp overnight (by this stage the pups are learning to fly in the trees in the camp so won’t be where they were left). So there’s lots going on. The high pitched contact calls of pups are evident”.

The mother circling and contact calling for her pup recording is also from Lachlan Swamp, Centennial Park, taken from the edge of the camp on the 12th of January, 2021, just before midday. “After around 6 weeks [when the pups are too heavy to carry for long distances], the mothers leave their pups in the camp when they fly out at night to forage, and circle the camp calling for them when they return pre-dawn”. We plan to have this call and response circling the gallery, so it feels like when you are in the camp, listening to this reunion. “In this case, it was late in the morning, and the mother was still flying through the camp calling frantically. It’s possible that some mishap had occurred to the pup during the night (python, powerful owl?) because by this time of day the mother/pups are usually well reunited”.

Timed to this, we hope to have the lighting in harmony with the sounds and the collage on the walls. Every part of the forest of this restored eucalyptus habitat collaged from pieces from the collection of the NGV should thrum. That’s the plan. That’s what we are polishing in the lead up to the 24th of March.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the marvellous people we have met along the way who have helped us with this project.

Thank-you.

Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, The remaking of things (detail), 2022–2023, especially for Melbourne Now. In the section above you can see a green possum from an earthenware jug (1931–1940), in the collection of the NGV.