Rachel Shearer: Earth Music: roomsheet

Tihei Mauri Ora! Earth Music is sound production made in response to a close listening to the earth. Making Earth Music involves listening for patterns and ideas embedded in the unfolding energetic processes of the material world and its immaterial extensions. Analogies of form, pattern and vibration that exist between diverse realms are translated into multi-channel sonic compositions. Ecology provides a model of interconnected and interdependent systems as do Māori concepts of whakapapa and whanaungatanga. It follows that no ecological system is a closed one and, according to Gregory Bateson, neither is consciousness: the mind is an ecosystem where our ideas are the 'flora' and 'fauna' of this system. Earth Music is an energetic threshold, a system within a system within a system activating sonic imaginings. Earth Music is an application, an incantation, a recitation, an affirmation of solidarity with the delicate interdependencies of the universe.

Rachel explores the medium of sound through a range of practices – experimental music, installation, academic research, audio visual projects and collaborations with practitioners of moving image and performance. Earlier experimental music history saw recorded audio work released by record labels Xpressway (NZ,1989) Ecstatic Peace (US,1997), Corpus Hermeticum (NZ, 2000) and Family Vineyard (US, 2003-2009) among others.  Some recent examples are public sound installations in Auckland such as The Flooded Mirror (2011), a permanent 9 channel work on the auckland waterfront and film scores such as Gavin Hipkins’ Erewhon (2014).

This exhibition was developed in conjunction with practice-led PhD research at Auckland University of Technology.