Port Chalmers/Potakere, Ōtepoti/Dunedin

St. Clair Beach and Esplanade, Ocean Beach, Ōtepoti/Dunedin

Dunedin Railway Station, Ōtepoti/Dunedin

Dunedin Botanic Gardens, Opaho, Ōtepoti/Dunedin

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Memorials to Active Listening was a project dealing with the poetics of recording, presentation, re-presentation and site.

The first phase of Memorials consisted of four .mp3 players embedded in roughly hewn concrete cubes with earbuds protruding from the top face of each. The .mp3 players each contained a looping selection of sounds recorded at a specific location, Port Chalmers/Potakere, The Dunedin Railway Station, Dunedin Botanic Garden, and Ocean Beach. Each concrete cube was installed temporarily at the site corresponding to the recordings on the player encased within it, thereby offering listeners an aural experience of a soundscape which was simultaneously direct and mediated.

In a gesture toward the spatiotemporal specificity of un-recorded sound, the death of the batteries powering the .mp3 players acted as an externally imposed timeframe for how long each cube spent at its respective site.