madeleine flynn and tim humphrey

the seagull sunriseskipper jamie wattthe seagull day 1the seagull sunrise 2the seagull sunriseIMAG0304IMAG0304the seagull the first morningthe seagull

the seagull

Click here for the Four Winds Festival Program, April 2012.

UPDATE: Radio National, Off-track, program features The Seagull here February 2012

THE SEAGULL: A Sound Vessel

The Seagull is a beautifully re-fitted skiff which appears on water and on land from early morning to early evening Audiences of four at a time can be part of this musical installation in a boat. Created by Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, award winning sound/music artists with local artisan Jamie Watt, and a team of willing locals who have recorded sounds and stories of the region, The Seagull appears and disappears throughtout the Bermagui region from January to Easter 2012.

This January, for the lucky few, there is a chance to voyage with skipper, Jamie Watt, onto Wallaga Lake to listen to the sound/music piece created by Madeleine and Tim from a year of listening to Bermagui. Each afternoon The Seagull will also be installed on land at Bermagui Surf Club, Murrah Hall and the Bermagui Nature Reserve.Audience are invited to climb aboard the boat to hear the electro-acoustic piece, which has been designed to mingle with the sounds of the site they are in.

As Madeleine and Tim say “ The Seagull is inspired in its form by a local story told to us about a hidden boat with a contested history. It is an experimental piece, in the way it sounds and in the way that the material has been collected. It is also about accessing and linking different strands of a complex and diverse community. Through a year-long process of listening and collecting, the unique form of the piece has emerged. We hope that the generosity and insight of people we have met and talked with is tangible in the whole experience. We also hope that people will feel themselves to actually be part of the work as they take an excursion into the sounds of this region”

The Seagull was commissioned by the Four Winds Festival and Artistic Director, Genevieve Lacey, and arises from the community distributed recording/listening project, Bermi Talks 2011. Supported by Festivals Australia and the Australia Council of the Arts.
The Seagull appeared during the Seaside Fair weekend March 9-11 2012 onland and on water, and during the Four Winds Festival at Easter 2012.

You can read about what the Bega press are saying here and listen to Radio National’s program Off Track, about The Seagull broadcast on February 18 here

Bermi talks: Listening to Bermagui: a Four Winds Festival sound project
Over the 14 month period leading up to Easter 2012, Madeleine and Tim are creating a democractically collected distributed sound work with the Bermagui community. This involves group soundwalks led by locals, individual sound recordings by locals of the region, trips to record activities, events and environments across the region including the activities and sound environments of fishing, dairy farming, the sea, lyrebirds, Wallaga Lake at night, Gulaga Mountain by day, school bus trips, Anzac Day march, the pub on a Thursday night, and many many more.
This recordings will form both an archive to be hosted by the Bega Valley Shire Council and developed for the library system by local Graeme Gerrard, and a sound work, The Seagull, which will be part of the Four Winds Festival, 2012. A set of 10 Zoom recorders are held at the Four Winds office, freely available to be borrowed by interested people.