OBSERVER: Chamber Made
Chamber Made will transform Melbourne Recital Centre into a sonic playground with Listening Acts – a bold takeover of its public and hidden spaces for the Now or Never festival, from August 22 – 24.
Listening Acts isn’t a typical concert or exhibition – it’s a portal into the unheard and unexpected, featuring three live performances and six sound installations that intersect sound, technology, memory and identity.
Grounded in the artists’ lived experiences, personal histories and cultural perspectives, the works create sensory encounters that are both solitary and shared, blurring the boundaries between hearing and feeling.
Chamber Made Artistic Director, Tamara Saulwick, invites audiences to experience this multi-artform sonic inquiry – one that reframes how sound is perceived and encourages listening in entirely new ways.
“Listening Acts transforms everyday sounds into something profound, strange and moving. How do we hear ourselves and each other through the layers of technology, trauma and time?” asks Saulwick.
The intimate live performance features three acoustic works:
Song to the Cell by Biddy Connor is a haunting duet between a live vocalist and a hospital IV machine. Featuring hums, beeps and mechanical rhythms, it’s a transhumanist song cycle exploring healing, dependence and human–machine connection.
Tactile Piece for Human Ears by Aviva Endean offers a subtly communal binaural experience. Audiences wear headphones to enter a surreal soundscape shaped by wind currents, pipe tones and underwater vibrations – altering their sense of acoustic reality.
Sounding forms / forming sounds by Alexandra Spence begins as a solo and evolves into a trio with Connor and Endean. Using resonating sinewaves, custom-built perspex instruments and drum skins, the work reveals the physical presence of sound in space and the body.
Six free installations guide audiences on a sonic journey throughout the venue:
Accordion Without Organs by Rebecca Bracewell is an unfolding work of sonic archaeology centred on a single accordion recording.
Cathedral Reverb by Hannah de Feyter invites one listener at a time into a sculpted sound space.
With Ghosts: A Choreography of Presence by Anna Liebzeit centres on a 13-foot plait of hair suspended on a wall, paired with an educational video.
Chit and Chat by Monica Lim eavesdrops on the uncanny, AI-generated conversation of two water coolers.
Myself in That Moment by Tamara Saulwick with Peter Knight is a 39-channel audio-visual installation.
In Silence by Thembi Soddell is a deeply personal, one-on-one audio-visual experience that grapples with family history and the intergenerational impacts of war.
Event Dates: August 22 – 24
Venue: Melbourne Recital Centre, 31 Sturt St, Southbank
Free installations. Fri. Aug. 22 – Sat. Aug. 23 11am – 8pm; Sun. Aug. 24 2.30pm – 6pm
Live performances. Fri. Aug 22 6pm and 8.30pm; Sat. Aug. 23 2pm and 6pm
Artist talk: Sat. Aug. 23 at 4pm
Tickets: $25 – $50 (plus booking fee)
Booking: melbournerecital.com.au or 9699 3333
Cheryl Threadgold with Ben Starick