Sound effects as East meets West

By DEBORAH DIAZ

Nelia Justo, Elam School of Fine Arts' latest artist in residence, sits in a small, rooftop flat overlooking Auckland.

At this height, the city outside the window is mute, which is just as well because Justo is so quietly spoken the tape recorder will struggle to pick up her voice.

Justo, a 30-year-old installation artist from Sydney, is at Elam till the end of September.

She was last in Auckland in March last year for SoundCulture 99, when she exhibited two Asian costumes at Auckland Museum.

One was a Korean bridal gown decorated with a Manchurian crane motif. Wires and speakers sewn into the garment emitted a bird call.

It captures neatly the characteristics of Justo's recent work - sound, an exploration of the flow of technology from East to West, and the use of traditional materials and electronics in a Marco Polo-meets-Sony juxtaposition.

"Our culture is very much a visual culture. In general, Western culture is," she says.

"You tend to forget sound. A lot of sound, especially within a city, is background hum.

"Sound is a very strong communicator because it has a sense of space and emotion that might not necessarily come across in images. When it's used in a public context, it can be quite powerful."

Justo became conscious of the power of sound when she was in Thailand.

"Sound was used in a very particular way there.

"I can remember going to a local shopping centre. It was near Christmas and they had this giant Santa Claus with sort of Barbie doll figures in the back of this truck, and reindeer.

"There was this blasting sound, full volume, totally distorted. They were giving away prizes; the main prize was a car. It was a strange context - this noise against the traditional, Thai-inspired entrance to the shopping mall.

"And on the King's birthday they set up stages all around one of the major parks. They had these huge speakers, big sub-woofers. There were literally walls of speakers, 20 by 20m or more. There were lots of these walls going at full capacity, distorting.

"It was really an audio onslaught. I was walking around with my partner, and we must have been 100m from the speakers but we could still hear it physically. You could feel it pounding on your chest, the sound was so intense.

"I think that was the most intense sound experience I have ever had."

Justo is fascinated by Western perceptions of Asia, especially how trade shaped technology and the image of an "exotic" East.

"It wasn't just objects and ideas, whole mythologies were created."

Consider porcelain, which took up to a year to be shipped from China to Europe. It was such a closely guarded family industry that the French sent Jesuit spies to bring back the secret.

"It was thought to have magical powers. The whole trade thing and the relationship between East and West has repercussions in contemporary culture, where the dominant trade is in electronic components and commodities.

"The textiles, the tea, and the porcelain are still being exported but it's really the electronics that have taken over."

Justo, born in France and of Portuguese descent, graduated in sculpture from the Sydney College of the Arts. Her interest in sound was a progression from her earlier work with moving sculptures.

Studying electronics in the early 90s was a big influence, then she found herself starting to "move away from video and the computer screen, which tend to dominate people's perceptions of contemporary art, because it was confining. Basically, it's in a box."

Her work is labour-intensive, involving sewing, metalwork, electronic circuitry and carpentry. She's even learned to make porcelain, making ginger-jar-inspired pots from her own moulds.

While at Elam she's examining her own perceptions of a foreign place, this time New Zealand.

"I thought, 'What are my impressions of this land as an outsider?' The things that came to mind were this volcanic landscape, the boiling mud pools, the tropical plants. I had this picture of a kind of prehistoric landscape."

She plans to make an installation, a garden, perhaps, complete with a soundtrack of noises gleaned from a recent sound-hunting mission to Rotorua.

The ancient sounds captured and filtered through contemporary technology. Sounds like it could be fun.