Dark Mofo’s Siren Song ready to wake the city

VIDEOS, INTERACTIVE: IT’S never easy getting up early in the dark winter months, but Dark Mofo’s traffic-stopping audio centrepiece is a good reason to rise with the sun.

IT’S never easy getting up early in the dark winter months, but Dark Mofo’s traffic-stopping audio centrepiece, Siren Song, is a good reason to rise with the sun.

The result of a years-long collaboration between Melbourne sound designer Byron J Scullin and creative agency Supple Fox, Siren Song will ring out over Hobart at sunrise and sunset for the next 10 days via 450 public address speakers placed atop six buildings around the city’s waterfront.

Singer Carolyn Connors, left, with Siren Song artists Hannah Fox and Bryon J Scullin on the roof of 10 Murray St with one of the six banks of speakers around the Hobart waterfront. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

Siren Song explores “sound as an expression of patriarchal power and authoritarian control ... and in turn, how sonic tools used to control and communicate might give voice to beauty and abstraction”.

For seven minutes each morning, the speakers will broadcast “feminine incantations” about the future of humanity, as performed by featured vocalists, including Tanya Tagaq, Deborah Cheetham and Carolyn Connors.

SEE BELOW FOR OUR INTERACTIVE OF DARK MOFO’S BEST EVENTS

David Walsh and Leigh Carmichael listen to the rehersal of Siren Song. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

And there’s no need to be alarmed when you see a helicopter buzzing over the city at sunset — each evening’s Siren Song will also feature a helicopter emitting sound from a tsunami warning system as it circles the waterfront.

“Because the [speaker] spaces are so spread out across the waterfront, depending on where you stand you get a very different sense of the sound,” Scullin explained.

PROGRAM JUNE 8 – Byron J Scullin and Supple Fox: Siren Song. Hobart skyline, at sunrise and sunset – Milan Milojevic: Wunderkammerama. The Barn at Rosny Farm, 11am-5pm – Extinction. TMAG, 5-10pm – Dark Mofo Films: Boys In The Trees, 6pm – Isabel Lewis: Occasions. Contemporary Art Tasmania, 6-9pm – Buried Country. Odeon Theatre, 7pm – Radio Gothic: The Hanniford Tapes and The Illustrated Girl. Peacock Theatre, 8pm and 9pm – Nai Palm & Ani Lou. Odeon Theatre, 10pm

“Imagine you have six singers standing static on a stage, and the helicopter is a seventh singer who can move around in amongst them. It can create very different effects, and change how the sound bounces off different parts of the city.

“It brings a completely spectacular aspect to the piece, having a chopper fly in and be this singing voice in the sky.”

Hannah Fox from Supple Fox said Siren Song’s sound “is designed to sit in the sky, and be coming from everywhere and nowhere”.

“Our hope is to create a beautiful and serene moment, and for it to invite a minute of reflection,” she said.

“It will be an unfamiliar sound, but it’s beautiful. We haven’t designed it to be a sonic assault, which I guess goes against the expectations of Dark Mofo. But what we’re trying to do is go beyond those expectations and bring something creative and interesting to the city.”

Siren Song continues at sunrise and sunset each day until June 18.