Hearing Line Seeing Sound
March 30th 2022
Kellie O’dempsey with sound artist Mick Dick Live drawing and sound performance in the Bunker at the Eumundi Hotel for the Sunshine Coast Arts Alliance Program Suncoaster.
Many years ago, I was at a talk by the German film director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris Texas, Pina and so on). He spoke about film as an amalgam of sound and vision. Of course, I immediately recalled David Bowies’ song from the Low Album Sound and Vision.
“Blue, Blue electric blue that’s the colour of my room…. Waiting for the gift of sound and vision.”
From memory (which is not my best attribute) Wim Wenders went on to say that when sound and vision occur together, a 3rd sensory experience happens. A sense of wonder—a phenomenon where the audience can be transported.
This is called multisensory integration where simultaneously experienced sensory modalities become a single multisensory perception. Since humans are animals, we use sight, touch, taste and so on to affect how we make meaning and perceive our experiences in the world.
Operating as a shared experience, Hearing Line Seeing Sound is a moment in Kellie and Mick’s ongoing exploration of sound and vision as a collaborative improvised performance of line and tune. Simultaneously Kellie’s line drawings of light are site generated in direct conversation with Mick’s evolving tonal audio. They attempt to enter together as they trace their location at the intersection of drawing and audio sound and vision.
Kellie and Mick collaborate in developing site-generated improvised performances that attempt to transfix as they trace their location at the intersection of line and audio, sound and vision. Performances include MONA FOMA, Biennale of Sydney, White Night Melbourne, National Gallery of Australia and Museum of Brisbane.
Photographer: Timothy Birch
Presented by
