Ros Bandt Senior Fellow Australia Centre University of Melbourne

I have been a leader in sound research in Australia over the last 25 years due to a career of sustained and prolific excellence both in my work as a research scholar and as an innovative sound artist with an international reputation. I have written three books on sound, initiating the first debate on the interrelationships between sound and sculpture in sounding artworks. I have written some forty-eight articles on various aspects of sound, sound sculpture, interactivity, environmental sound, sound installations, spatial music systems, and technological innovations in sound art in major international and Australian journals over a twenty-five year period. I have written four definitive encyclopaedic articles. My three ARC grants have all been awarded for ground breaking sound studies. The large monograph with audio CD, Sound Sculpture, 2001, is the first book that analyses the interface between sound and sculpture, drawing on original fieldwork on more than eighty interdisciplinary artists. In 1997 with Jon Drummond I invented an interactive tool for multi-channel sound design in multi-media and CD Rom to enhance the spatial use of sound in digital media on a small ARC grant. Over the past three years I have pioneered the interdisciplinary field of sound design in public space through The Australian Sound Design Project, a website and data base which is the first research facility of its kind in Australia. (www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au). It has published original works of over 125 sound designers, and provides rich research tools, search engines and refereed articles. The ASDP has become recognised as the premier voice of Australian sound on the net, establishing Australia's contribution worldwide (see D2). My sound research is inextricably linked to my sound practice which serves as a laboratory for sound analysis and new sound methodologies. From 1977-2004 I have pioneered some 30 interactive sound installations, invented the world's first two storey sound playground in 1981, the SSIIPP interactive multi-channel sound dispersion system in 1985, and tested many applications of new technologies. My spatial interactive sound installations have pioneered new applications of soundscape recordings, indigenous stories, and heritage sound with the latest digital technologies. My unique blend of theory and practice constantly sustains an innovative approach in establishing the new field of sound research.

Monograph

Bandt, Ros, 2001. Sound Sculpture, Intersections in Sound and Sculpture in Australian Artworks, Sydney, Craftsman House, Fine Arts Press (This monograph with audio CD looks at some 130 Australian artists working in art forms which cross the platforms of both sound and sculpture, 200 pages, 80 plates, audio CD.)

Book Chapters

Bandt, Ros, 2003. 'Environmental Music',Companion to Music and Dance, ed. Nelson Kenny, Currency press, Australia, 257-8.

Bandt, Ros, 2003. 'Kangaroo Pouch' oscillator, Treasures, Highlights of the Cultural Collections of the University of Melbourne, eds. McAuliffe, Chris and Peter Yule, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Publishing, 234-236, 309.

Bandt, Ros, 2002. 'Soundscape' Getting the Measure, ed. Carmen Grostal, Footscray Community Arts Centre, 37-44, 55.

Bandt, Ros, 2003. 'Soundscape', Companion to Music and Dance, ed. Nelson Kenny, Currency press, Australia, 627-9.

Bandt, Ros, 2003. 'Sound Sculpture', Companion to Music and Dance, ed. Nelson Kenny, Currency Press, Australia, 625-7.

Bandt, Ros. 2003. 'Spatial Counterpoint.' New Adventures in Sound Art, ed Nadine Thierault-Copeland, Canada, 2-5.

Refereed Articles

Bandt, Ros, 2004. Sound Design as Sonic Architecture, Earshot, The U.K. Journal For Acoustic Ecology, Ed Rahma Khazan, in press, (accepted November 2003)

Bandt, Ros, 2003. Sounding remoteness, Flinders Island, Soundscape, and The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 3(1), 4(1), 46-48.

Bandt, Ros, 2000. Sounding Spaces, Acoustic Worlds, Australian Sound Designs for Public Spaces, Public Art Review, vol. 11, no 2, 2000, St Paul, Minnesota, USA, 23-26.

Bandt, Ros, 2003. Taming the wind: Aeolian sound practices in Australasia, Organised Sound 8(2): Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, 195-204.

Bandt, Ros, 2003. The changing faces of Australian Identity as hear through children's voices in Kim's Song, The Australia/ Asia Foundation ed. Le Tuan Hung. http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aaf/kimssong.htm

Bandt, Ros, 2004. The Listening Place Alma Park's Multi-cultural Voices, Soundscape, The Journal of Acoustioc Ecology, 5(1): accepted in press January.

Bandt, Ros, 2002/2003. The Australian Sound Design Project, Soundscape, The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, Vol 3, Number 2, 59.

Published Conference Proceedings

Bandt, Ros and Paine Garth, 2001 Designing Public Acoustic Space: Australian Sound Designs, a Database and Website for a More Considered Acoustic Environment, Proceedings, Waveform: a Digital Musics Conference, ACMA, School of Contemporary Arts, University of Western Sydney, 1-9.

Bandt, Ros, 2003. Documenting the Difficult and Ephemeral: A Web Approach to the Documentation of Interactive Electroacoustic Sound Designs in Australia, International Conference: Resonance, IRCAM with De Montfort University, Centre Pompidou, Paris, October 15-17.

www.ircam.fr/resonances2003/Ross_Bandt.html

Bandt, Ros, 2001. Hearing Australian Identity: Sites as acoustic spaces, an audible polyphony.” Proceedings, Nation and Narration Conference, Australian Studies Centre, the University of Queensland, June 2001, pp.23-25. www.sounddesign.edu.au

Bandt, Ros, 2003. Silos, Icons of life and death, Australia, Who Cares? EASA International Conference, University of Aviero, Portugal, September.

Bandt, Ros, 2001. “Sounding Giant Cylinders: Discrete Acoustic Environments,” Proceedings, Sound Practice, Sound Culture and Environments, Dartington Hall, Devon, UK, pp. 11-16.

Bandt, Ros, 2002. “Spatial Counterpoint as a Design Principle in the Australia Gallery, the Melbourne Museum.” Proceedings, Form, Space, Time, Music, Architecture and Design, ACMApp. 7-16. http://www.iii.rmit.edu.au/sonology/ACMC2002,/

Bandt, Ros, 2003. Taming the Wind, Aeolian sound practices in Australasia, The International Conference of Acoustic Ecology, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, March, Published CD ROM, AFAE

As a scholar my early musicological writings on Chance and Indeterminacy and Repetitive Music still receive critical acclaim for their comprehensive and analytical acuity and innovative analytical methods. My innovative sound research in the form of 6 channel audible stories Speak before it's too late, on lost, endangered and frozen languages in Australia received an honourable mention by the Australian Centre for Australian Studies in Canberra for an outstanding contribution to Australian Culture, (2001). In 1993 I was the inaugural Benjamin Cohen Fellow for innovation, leading cross disciplinary research in electronic music, interactive sculpture, theatre and architecture for an interactive sound installation Altars of Power and Desire at Ball State University, Indiana, USA. I have been invited to speak at many international symposiums including the Zeitgleich Symposium on digital sound in Innsbruck, 1994 and in 1993 I gave a major address on Australian sound sculpture in Australia in Banff, Canada, for the inaugural world forum for acoustic ecology of which I am a founding member. My research is constantly expounded in my sound practice which has won many awards in Australia and internationally, including the Sound Art Australia Prize, from the ABC with the WDR Cologne and the Goethe foundation, 1997. In 1991, I was the first woman to win Australia's highest musical award, the Don Banks fellowship. International electro-acoustic commissions for innovative sound research productions include the West Deutsche Rundfunk, ORF Radio Vienna, WNYC NY, the Paris Autumn Festival, and Radio New Zealand. I have represented Australia twice for the International Society of Contemporary Music, with Thrausmata: 7 ancient Greek fragments, Bucharest, 2000, and the collaborative sound exploratorium, the White Room in Warsaw, 1994.

My movement in and out of academic contexts has come about through the combination of scholarship and practice integrated in my work, (10.4). One constantly informs the other and is impossible without it. My international standing as a prominent sound installation artist and composer, has allowed me to develop a unique international network of people and resources which I can bring to the field of sound research. My career in sound research has included international invitations as visiting professor in Australian Sound, at Ball Sate University 1993 and Rollins College Florida in 1989. I frequently assess PhDs in sound and advise national bodies on sound practice and policy issues. Over the years I have consulted and assessed for the ABC, the Australian Council for the Arts, Arts Victoria, ACMA and adjudicated many performances and sound events. I have curated three large sound festivals, including a double international exhibition and audiotheque, Hearing Place, involving some 160 international sound practitioners and scholars from over 13 countries which coincided with the first symposium of acoustic ecology held in Australia in 2003. I have been invited for numerous radio productions, critique and commentary including Radio N.Z.'s How Australians Hear Australia 2002, the ABC's Dots on the Landcape 2002/3 and Aaron Xim's On Sound Field Recording, USA 2002. In 1997 I was commissioned by the ABC for a 50 minute live international satellite link with Johannes S. Sistermans in Germany published on the ABC's website. I regularly give key-note addresses and conference papers, and have served on many boards and panels. I consult in acoustic design for major public and private projects, review books and articles and report on innovative sound exploration and research. I have continually exhibited multi-channel interactive sound installations in public galleries and site specific works in public space, some 45, over twenty years.

a) Experience skills and expertise: I have directed and supervised three ARC grants, 1992, 1997 and 2001, all of which chart new areas in new ways. These comprise a five year research fellowship at Monash University, a small grant collaborating with interstate personnel at LaTrobe University devising an innovative multi-media product and the three year large grant directing The Australian Sound Design Project with two different research assistants here at the Australian Centre, the University of Melbourne. The successful direction and outcomes of these three projects at different universities has given me the experience to direct a fulltime, five-year nation-wide project such as From Songlines to Mobiles with confidence. The innovative methodology including digital audiovisual sound recordings and the graphic space- time graphs are skills and methods developed in my sound art practice. I have the high level of production skills in sound technology required by the project from two points of view, field recording and sound editing. These have been part of my sound research academically and creatively (CD ROM, 1997, Sound Sculpture monograph with audio CD with 30 sound examples published by Craftsman House, Fine Arts Press, their first audio publication, 2001). I have designed and produced over 21 published recordings and CDRoms with different companies worldwide, including Wergo Germany, New Albion, USA and ABC/EMI and Move Records Australia, and can be confident to produce a DVD of the highest quality. My skills as an analytical musicologist will be used to set the parameters of soundscape analysis for the first time. Setting up the ASDP, website and database has provided me with the knowledge and expertise to form the larger and more comprehensive Australian Sound website dealing with sensitive material. I have formed all the intellectual property permission requirements including licence deeds. Public consultation, field recordings and gathering interviews requires special sensitivity and I have been involved in this kind of work since the five year research fellowship and over the twenty years in my sound practice. My original soundworks have often included indigenous voices and stories. My aboriginal family is a constant mentor. I have successful collaborative working relationships with all mentioned associates. My international networking skills in Europe, Asia and America have been proven asboth ASDP director, researcher and soundartist.

b) The research environment The Australian Centre is a most appropriate host for this innovative interdisciplinary national initiative because it is one of the few interdisciplinary units in this country. It provides links in spatial geography, oral history and indigenous studies, providing the perfect intellectual setting to explore issues of Australian sound, its identity and place, and to develop the theoretical base of soundscape studies. Stimulating colleagues are Kate Darian-Smith, (historian), George Tibbits, (architect), and Kiera Lindsay, (spatial history), Michelle Duffy (indigenous performance). The Australian Centre will host related symposia and colloquia in association w also provides links with other academic colleagues, Tony Birch, (indigenous writer), and Paul Carter (architecture) at the University of Melbourne based in the Faculties of Arts, Music, Creative Arts, History and Philosophy of Science, Environmental Studies and the collections at the Grainger Museum, The Ian Potter Museum of Fine Art, and has well-developed networks with cultural institutions and the wider community. The elaborate IT infrastructure for the web is already in place at the Centre which has proven a productive and successful work environment.