WET LISTENING

Sara Retallick

Listening Tank (2024)

Listening Tank invites individuals to immerse their bodies and ears into a tank of sounding water to listen to a durational sound work composed specifically for this installation setting. This work embraces slowness, sensation, and solitude and establishes a level of intimacy and vulnerability with the audience as they listen, soak in, and absorb this tactile and elemental experience of sonic immersion.

Listening Tank is a practice-based research project exploring how touch, sight and hearing can unite to expand the possibilities of listening. The research involves the creation of an underwater amplified sound installation, which immerses the body and ears of a solo audience member in a bath-like object to access a multisensory experience of sound. This tank is used to present an electroacoustic vocal composition titled A Voice, A Breath. By amplifying voice underwater, I investigate the physical relations between sound, water, and the listening/sounding body, focusing on material interactions between these constituents. Thus, physical concerns related to sound are considered through the research question: What can be learned about listening by submerging the body in sounding water? 

This project was created as part of my MFA at UNSW between 2021-24. My thesis is available at UNSW Works

Flow State (2021)

Flow State is a site-specific bathing experience that took place on Herring Island in Naarm’s Birrarung River for RISING Festival, in May 2021. The installation used sound, light, scent and sensation to probe awareness of space and time. This outdoor sonic bathing experience augmented existing soundscapes from the site of the work to create a sensory deep listening experience. Soundwaves in water are heard when they travel through the fluid tissue of the body and vibrate the skull and inner ear nerves. By using two distinct methods of listening — through the air using conventional methods and through water using devices on the interior of the heated bath — this work invited the audience to become conscious of multiple forms of paying attention.

This work was commissioned and presented by RISING Festival Melbourne in 2021.

Creative Team:

Sara Retallick - Lead artist and creative development. Role: concept development, sound composition, installation design and construction.

Amanda Roff - Artist and creative research. Role: site-specific creative development, research and program planning.

Raphael Buttonshaw - Installation technician and design consultant. Role: installation design consultation and assistance, construction assistance and building.

Review for Overland Magazine

Pelagic (2019) by Liv Boyle + Jennifer Lavers + Sara Retallick 

The pelagic zone encompasses the majority of the water column from the open ocean to the coral reef, and all species inhabiting it. 

This research based site-responsive collaboration between contemporary jeweller Liv Boyle, marine biologist Dr Jennifer Lavers, and sound artist Sara Retallick, explores the environmental impact of plastic waste converging in our oceans.  

In 2017 Lavers led a ground breaking Research Expedition to Henderson Island of the Pitcairn Group, exposing “exceptional and rapid accumulation of anthropogenic debris on one of the world’s most remote and pristine islands” (Lavers, 2017). A World Heritage site noted for its isolation and biodiversity, Lavers’ discovery broke global headlines; 38 million pieces of plastic waste choked Henderson’s East Beach. Arguably one of Earth’s last vestiges of paradise, this uninhabited coral atoll provides a safe haven for migratory species like the Masked Booby, the Red Tailed Tropic Bird and Murphy’s Petrels. Situated in the heart of the South Pacific Gyre, it also contains the highest density of plastic pollution on record. 

Influenced by expert observations and quantitative data, the artists present new works utilising material collected by Lavers during the second Research Expedition conducted in June 2019. This unique collaboration sees the coming together of disciplines: object, jewellery, sound, and science, discussing site-specific ecologies under extreme pressure.

28 Aug - 14 Sep 2019 at BLINDSIDE GALLERY

More here

Drift (2018)

Nov 2018 at the City Baths, Melbourne

Drift is a 16-channel underwater sound composition that was presented as a one off event at the City Baths in Melbourne’s CBD. The work requires participants to fully immerse themselves in the water, with their ears below the water’s surface to experience the full spectrum of sound. Listeners experience weightlessness as they float supported by the mass of sound filled liquid. 

This work activates a ritual. The water, always moving, mimics the temporal nature of the sound that inhabits it. Participants have agency over their experience as they move freely around the pool to listen to the different speakers.

Portal (2018)

Interruptions 8 Sep - 7 Oct 2018 at the Stockroom Gallery, Kyneton

Two-channel sound, plastic drum, wooden plinth, warm water.

Submerge your ears and listen. Portal, a sound portal in a negative space. An intimate listening experience; what sounds within the body of water.

This work is part of 'Interruptions' group show at Stockroom Gallery running September 8th - October 7th 2018, with artists James Carey, Michael Graeve, Joanne Mott, Cameron Robbins, Robbie Rowlands and Jason Waterhouse. 

Financial support from RMIT Creative.

Slipstream (2018)

International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA) 2018 in Durban, South Africa

A is a collaborative project with Alex Davies, Slipstream is a multichannel sound composition experienced in a unique embodied manner; underwater via submerged speakers. Sound materials collected from Durban and surrounds form a site-specific composition that considers the importance of water for a community living in a humid sub-tropical climate. Presented in public pools around Durban, Slipstream brings art into everyday rituals in playful and participatory ways.

Slipstream is an ongoing collaborative project. Audio below is an except from this presentation. 

Photos by Alex Davies 

Please see https://www.sararetallick.com/work for more works and listening if the time permits.