The reviewers are Kylie Eastley, Sara Wright and Anica Boulanger-Mashberg.
Siren
Ray Lee
Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery at Inveresk
27 March – 5 April
Sublime Chorus
An emergency vehicle rushes past. You hear a siren racing up behind you in traffic or coming down the street from your office in the city. Your breath halts because your brain warrants a flight response. The siren rises and crescendos. Your thinking quickly places you outside the context of this danger and distress, and you breathe easy again. The siren passes you, falls and fades; you settle back into your reality.
Ray Lee must know that each of us takes our own psycho- and physiological response to the siren into this performance. This is a strong part of what makes his Siren so remarkable. Lee first liberates the siren from these instinctive associations, and distils its essential sensory qualities to rebuild a new experience for us. Our old associations creep back only to allow for the sublime to flood our senses.
Before entering Siren patrons are instructed by museum staff to stay silent throughout the production, and to freely move around the room. The doors open into the dark, cavernous train shed and at once the audience can explore the perimeter of the installation. Immediately before is a barrier set out with small, white LED lights, but what first catches our eyes are the built steel tripods. Up to three metres tall, each of these has a propeller-like crossbar with a siren and red LED bulb attached to each end. Ray Lee and Harry Dawes stand among the tripods in grey, woollen suits, looking every part their experienced technicians.
The men approach their first subject. One leans over the tripod with a pocket screwdriver and flashlight to initiate the first siren tone. The drone of the siren begins at once and he uses his screwdriver to adjust the tone, playing it up then down to reach its satisfactory note. This scaling up and down reminds us of the qualities of any siren. Once this is set, they move to the next, eventually activating groups of three at a time; tuning each siren to the right note to join the now expanding noise.
The drone. A chorus? I fluctuate between feelings of major and minor, positive and negative, apprehension and fascination. Each segment of this performance alerts us to a new level of sensory experience. Lee and Dawes now set the sirens in motion, all rotating at different times; the drone surges. Up-lights cast the most incredible kinetic shadows of the machines onto the white bricks of the shed, and make spectres too of us, the ‘spectators’, milling about to hear it all. I walk close to one revolving apparatus and recall the noise of a siren moving past, over and over. I move round the room to hear different shapes, sizes and heights; what this does to each siren. Our technicians stir excitement as they move cool and confident through the field of propellers.
Just as interesting is the reaction of the audience, exploring and experiencing this new soundscape alone and together.
The lights go out and what was a feat of mechanistic virtuosity is now … pure magic! The red LED bulbs on the end of each siren burn through the darkness. Red radar signals spinning and whirring. Are we seeing the sound? Lee and Dawes reverse the cycle: lights back on, the rotating ceases. The drone thins with one remaining signal but the sublime chorus – a mild terror and strange beauty – continues to resonate within us.
Sara Wright is an artist in Hobart.
…
Siren
Ray Lee
Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery at Inveresk
27 March – 5 April
Sublime Chorus
An emergency vehicle rushes past. You hear a siren racing up behind you in traffic or coming down the street from your office in the city. Your breath halts because your brain warrants a flight response. The siren rises and crescendos. Your thinking quickly places you outside the context of this danger and distress, and you breathe easy again. The siren passes you, falls and fades; you settle back into your reality.
Ray Lee must know that each of us takes our own psycho- and physiological response to the siren into this performance. This is a strong part of what makes his Siren so remarkable. Lee first liberates the siren from these instinctive associations, and distils its essential sensory qualities to rebuild a new experience for us. Our old associations creep back only to allow for the sublime to flood our senses.
Before entering Siren patrons are instructed by museum staff to stay silent throughout the production, and to freely move around the room. The doors open into the dark, cavernous train shed and at once the audience can explore the perimeter of the installation. Immediately before is a barrier set out with small, white LED lights, but what first catches our eyes are the built steel tripods. Up to three metres tall, each of these has a propeller-like crossbar with a siren and red LED bulb attached to each end. Ray Lee and Harry Dawes stand among the tripods in grey, woollen suits, looking every part their experienced technicians.
The men approach their first subject. One leans over the tripod with a pocket screwdriver and flashlight to initiate the first siren tone. The drone of the siren begins at once and he uses his screwdriver to adjust the tone, playing it up then down to reach its satisfactory note. This scaling up and down reminds us of the qualities of any siren. Once this is set, they move to the next, eventually activating groups of three at a time; tuning each siren to the right note to join the now expanding noise.
The drone. A chorus? I fluctuate between feelings of major and minor, positive and negative, apprehension and fascination. Each segment of this performance alerts us to a new level of sensory experience. Lee and Dawes now set the sirens in motion, all rotating at different times; the drone surges. Up-lights cast the most incredible kinetic shadows of the machines onto the white bricks of the shed, and make spectres too of us, the ‘spectators’, milling about to hear it all. I walk close to one revolving apparatus and recall the noise of a siren moving past, over and over. I move round the room to hear different shapes, sizes and heights; what this does to each siren. Our technicians stir excitement as they move cool and confident through the field of propellers.
Just as interesting is the reaction of the audience, exploring and experiencing this new soundscape alone and together.
The lights go out and what was a feat of mechanistic virtuosity is now … pure magic! The red LED bulbs on the end of each siren burn through the darkness. Red radar signals spinning and whirring. Are we seeing the sound? Lee and Dawes reverse the cycle: lights back on, the rotating ceases. The drone thins with one remaining signal but the sublime chorus – a mild terror and strange beauty – continues to resonate within us.
Sara Wright is an artist in Hobart.
…
Siren
Ray Lee
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Inveresk)
27 March-5 April (Launceston), 4-5 April (Hobart)
Don’t Be Alarmed
At the door, the gallery attendant greets patrons with a warning that flashes should not be used in this installation performance. But in any case, you would be very much mistaken to think you could capture this work with a photograph.
Ray Lee and Harry Dawes, in roles somewhere between curator and performer, slowly tune their ‘instrument’ – a collection of tripods resembling large mechanical insects – gradually building a wall of sound which pulses, sings, fills the space, and engulfs the audience. As the work builds in intensity, this sound begins to feel so pure that it is difficult to imagine ever returning to the mundane noises of speech, traffic, and everyday life. It isn’t fair to give away much more about how the installation performance proceeds, but as it concludes, in the silence, you’re left with a genuinely emotional and physiological regret that this experience is over.
The title clearly describes the sound and light installation which forms the core of this work – a marvellous architecture of speakers and spinning red lights to which such prosaic description is an insult. It could also refer to another kind of siren: the tempting mythological creature whose beautiful voice compelled sailors to lose their way. This work is unique, beautifully hypnotic, and strangely addictive, and it may well lure you out to sea.
Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is a Hobart-based performer and writer.
