Ros Bandt

What is a peaceful space?

Peaceful Spaces are harmonious non threatening places to be, where there is opportunity for reflection with no confrontation. A peaceful space is a place where the mind and the body have time to catch up and connect with the surroundings in an intimate way. It is a places where all the senses are satisfied and non threatened so the mind is encouraged to be in a state of contemplation about the relationships the person has or may develop with that space. Listening, looking, sharing, moving, touching, smelling, in a holistic way. It is a safe and desirable place to be, one which encourages you to spend time”being in place” savouring these connections. Peaceful spaces are easily disrupted, a cross word, a loud sound, a bad smell, the movement of the sun, or the entrance by a threatening person or insect can disturb the equilibrium of a peaceful space in a moment. Peaceful spaces eventuate when they are a tuned habitat, capable of inducing reverie, repose, utopic human relationships. Most of all they are enriching to the person who has chosen their peaceful space for their own personal reasons. Sometimes this can be collective. They cannot be static as they are experienced through time, by life itself. Peaceful spaces I have known and experienced will be shared along with peaceful spaces I have created in public space including the collaborative The White Room Poland, Aeolian Harps Lake Mungo,The

Benalla Mural, the Listening Place, St Kilda, and Isonagaki,Sydney.

Peaceful spaces can also be virtual and imaginary. Sonic works can provide invisible peaceful spaces through their temporal design of sound space, such as Soft and Fragile Music in Glass and Clay, or the interpreted carpark cylinder of Stagazer, or the mountain and underwater sea soundscapes of the Ama women in the recent double CD Isobue

Biography

Ros Bandt is an Australian sound artist internationally acclaimed for her sensitive soundings of spaces, public and private, urban, natural and virtual. She is at once a composer, performer, installation artist, instrument maker, sound researcher and author. She has pioneered many forms of sound art including sounding industrial chambers, original glass music, building sound playgrounds, and interactive mixed media installations and sound sculptures. She is a founding member of ensembles, LIME, Back to Back Zithers, La Romanesca, Carte Blanche and the Free Music Ensemble. She was awarded the Don Banks Composers Award for her original work and many national and international innovation awards including the Benjamin Cohen Peace Prize. She is published by Sonic Gallery, Move, Wergo, EMI, New Albion Records, Fine Arts Press, and Cambridge Scholars Press. As well as her artistic practice she directs the award winning on line gallery and data base, the Australian Sound Design Project at the Australian Centre, the University of Melbourne, funded on her third ARC grant. Her books and writings on sound are well known. Her most recent book is Hearing Places, Sound Place Time Culture co-edited with Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon(Cambridge Scholars Publising,U.K), and her double CD Isobue on the endangered Japanese sea whistle with Kumi Kato has just been released on Sonic Gallery. www.rosbandt.com, www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au.