Snowmelt Transmission | 2024

Site specific audio installation at Bogong Village.

Snowmelt Transmission is a short audio work which takes place over a daily call at 5.30pm to the local payphone at Bogong Village.

The piece is composed of field recordings taken in the high country by the artist during his residency at the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture in April 2024, alongside recordings from the Bogong High Plains Sound Map – a digital repository of sounds from the high plains created by the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture.

Climate modelling scenarios ominously predict the number of snowy days in alpine Australia plummeting in decades to come, with this having drastic knock-on effects on ecology and human life in the region. The piece takes the form of a call to this local payphone from an undisclosed future time, when these effects have been irreversibly set in motion. It serves as an ode to the local landscape, tracing the contours of the Victorian Alps through sound – following the flow of water as it turns from snow, to stream, to fall and its eventual conversion to electricity as it carves through the high country.

This work was made on unceded Jaithmathang country with additional recordings from Bidawal, Dhuduroa, Gunai/Kurnai, Mitambuta, Monero-Ngarigo and Taungurung country. I acknowledge and pay respects to their elders past and present.

Developed during artist residency program at the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture.

Narrated by Emma Payne.

Made with additional recordings from the Bogong High Plains Sound Map.