Koala Extinction

Electro-acoustic composition
by Ros Bandt

Duration: 13:08 minutes

Programme Note

A disturbing world on the brink of extinction. Humans pay no heed to the science through greed and inability to distribute fairly, refusing equitable and sustainable practices at great consequences to the other species and ourselves. The delicate layers of the food chain are broken through rampant exploitation. In Australia this devastation has been achieved in only 200 years ruining the careful symbiotic landcare of first Australians. This is the audible journey of how we have dug ourselves into this abyss leaving the wails of koalas to scream the terror, drought, fires, floods, polar icemelt,  shared habitat plundering towards annihilation.

Process

The work was composed and mixed in Reaper by the composer. Raw koala recordings provided by Tony Bayliss (AWSRG) were set in the colliding submixes of the Glacial melt, an electroacoustic sub mix from the  digitalglass forest installation. A constantly changing realtime  electronically treated 6 channel sound installation was activated by kinetic glass sound tree sculptures of suspended glass. The amplified Tarhu with delay navigated the dangerous space which fed back into itself, the human not wanting to stop constantly biting its tail.

Ros Bandt multi channel sound installation, amplified tarhu with delay performance, electroacoustic composition

all sounds, images and texts © 2020 by Ros Bandt

Commissioned by the Australia-Asian Foundation, for Sonic Gallery,  thanks to Le Tuan Hung