Post Impressions: A Travel Book for Tragic Intellectuals

by Hollis Taylor
Twisted Fiddle Productions, Portland, Oregon, USA, 2007
243 pp illus. 88 col/ bw, with DVD (PAL). Paper, $35.00
ISBN: 9780646471747.

Reviewed by Mike Leggett
Creativity & Cognition Studios
University of Technology Sydney

legart@ozemail.com.au

The author and her traveling companion, Jon Rose, are both highly skilled and experienced violinists. They have worked experimentally with sound for many years, mostly with stringed instruments, the classical kind for Taylor, the ‘relative violin’ variety for Rose, (pursued as an instrument making practice), a feature of recitals, concerts and other manifestations.

A string of commissions led to the decision to travel together in campervan and all-terrain vehicle across the Australian continent. Bookings at festivals and community venues as they went were but part of the passage – collecting and archiving was the central purpose, a selection of the evidence becoming the contents of this DVD and book publication.

Australia is a continent where the signs of the onslaught of a colonial and imperialist past are always present. It is the most arid continent; the majority of which is barely inhabited, yet every part of it has been surveyed and divided, physically, ideologically, and socially. The fence is the most outward sign of these divisions, Taylor and Rose covering 35,000 kilometres in a recuperation of the fence’s appearances, its social significance to those who maintain the fences, and the sound it makes when subjected to various forms of physical interaction. The DVD is the essential artwork in the collection of this evidence. Some 77 minutes of image and sound document intersections between the two musicians, both solo and ensemble, and the base physicality of the Fence: posts, supports, wire, netting, and gates. These are hit, plucked, bowed, fingered, shaken and kicked. Each recital is carefully prepared for the camera, the directional and contact microphones, clearly rehearsed in situ before recording. Selected and edited, each element of the whole becomes a 30-second to 3-minute stanza within the complete composition. Using fades to black between each, a new location in some part of the continent is introduced, where the particular quality of sound and performance is apt for the movement. Background colours change subtly in these places, only hinted at with the otherwise excellent video images, arid places of yellow, sienna, ochre, orange, brown and black. The two virtuosos are quite correctly dressed in black for the gig, against the changing backdrops of what the colonising Europeans described as wilderness, a territory still contested between city slickers, Bush and Outback settlers and the indigenous peoples.

The DVD will cycle continuously from beginning to end without word or text, superb recorded sound becoming centre stage in all its vast range of dynamics, tones and cadences. The printed part of the work collects further evidence of their expeditions. A centre section reproduces in brilliant colour illustrations of some of the places seen in the video. The author’s words satirise the explorer’s journal of the 19^th Century and the diary of the contemporary ‘grey nomad’ retiree, recording the meals prepared from basic ingredients, the type and year of wine consumed with the meal, the places seen, the people passed, the adventures and travails encountered along the way.

Description of the sounds heard return to the central thesis: Taylor, possessing perfect pitch, transposes what she hears to musical notation, dotted as illustrations throughout the account, the rhythms and intonations of fence, bird and animal – these are closely heard and observed, capturing the bizarreness of the sound of the physical world, its aleatoric splendour, from the whisper of sand and air crossing a wire to the roar of steel against steel. Rose sparingly contributes observations of their encounters, focusing on structures and techniques of music-making and sound production. He also guides the interviews, later transcribed, with various inhabitants connected with the fences, primarily the 3300-mile Dog Fence and the more famous Rabbit-Proof Fence, the core of their three sojourns.
As a social document of the inhabitants of these remote areas their contribution is spare. There is a sense that whilst decrying the onslaught of colonialism and modernity, the travellers are an ironic continuation of the tradition, extracting material in return for cultural significance, judged by the norms of our times. The times recorded and represented here are rapidly passing and the documentation gathered here by two idiosyncratic collectors is an imaginative interpretation, the testing of the intellect and the title itself examples of the prevalent dry humour throughout.

The services of a designer would have eased the appearance of this range of material: the font used for the interviews rendered them nearly illegible; the use of indentation often runs a ragged line for the eye to follow; a glossary of American and Australian slang expressions might have aided readers on both sides of the Pond. There is also a list for further reading, of mainstream Australiana.