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Composed in 1998, this was an outdoor installation situated at the main intersection of the City of Melbourne, being Flinders St., and Swanston St. The streets were blocked to traffic as thousands of audience members arrived to watch a fourty minute opening ceremony featuring three hundred performers representing the various waves of migration and music/sounds that are representative of their culture. The history of place was “sung” to Melbourne in a modern context of electro- acoustic music, prerecorded elements mixing with live performances in a dizzy sonic avalanche of sounds, textures and contexts. This was projected in all kinds of spatial dimensions via a massive speaker system designed by myself and the sound design company “System Sound”. The music played from fifty speakers installed on the tops of buildings, church steeple spires, and also on ground levels. This work begins with the imagined sounds of the forming earth, volcanos, moving air currents, and water forming matter…….it progresses through to the music of the Aboriginal peoples, and then to the waves of immigration that make up contemporary Melbourne. Despite the enormous challenge and parameters it was a very moving and successful installation event to open the Arts Festival, on a gorgeous early Spring evening in Melbourne, in 1998.
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