ARTIST BIO

Sinead Roarty is a Sydney and New York-based creative director who bridges the fields of writing and time-based art for commercial and creative projects. She has won over 80 global awards, including two Grand Prix, and has served on international award juries, including Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, the London International Awards and New York Festivals. Her short stories and essays have been published internationally and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

On the Edge was created as part of a non-traditional PhD at the University of Technology Sydney. It was recognised as the best doctoral thesis from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and awarded on the 2024 UTS Chancellor's List for ‘exceptional scholarly achievement in PhD research’.

CREDITS

I am indebted to the brilliant humans at MassiveMusic, in particular Abigail Sie and Ramesh Sathia; and Lance Gurisik, who composed the various musical interludes and commissions, including the 121-key underwater piano concerto. The actors were also invaluable collaborators: Dalara Williams—a Wiradjuri /Gumbaynggirr/ Bundjalung woman, steered me on the subtle tone and manner that Patyegarang would have used, while Rupert Degas's expert knowledge of 18th-century accents was essential for getting the various sounds of the English, Irish and Scottish colonists right. Special thanks also goes to the team at History Lab and 2SER for permission to use the excerpt of the Eora fisherwomen singing (as performed by Maddi Lyn Collier) from their wonderful Fishing for Answers podcast.

Writer/Director: Dr Sinead Roarty

Primary Supervisor: Dr Delia Falconer

Alternate Supervisor: Assoc Professor Debra Adelaide

Sound Studio: MassiveMusic

Sound Designer: Abby Sie

Composer: Lance Gurisik

Sound Editor: Madelyn Tait

Producer: Katrina Aquilia

Place-sound Singer: Deepka Ratra

Eora Fisherwoman Singer: Maddi Lyn Collier

Actors: Dalara Williams, Rupert Degas, Aimee Horne, Asher Phillips, Leeanna Walsman

 SOUND NOTES

On the Edge explores South Head’s spatial history, connecting the unresolved wounds of frontier violence to the violence of self-annihilation that persists there today–237 years after Governor Arthur Phillip set up camp at the headland.[1] A conceptual thread runs through the work, allowing many entry and exit points to draw attention to the complex and conflicting narratives and breathe new life into the silent histories of this "ruptured space".[2]

Synopsis
The work starts with the familiar and goes backwards and forwards throughout time using a series of transitions. At first, the VR sound field consists of sounds you'd expect to hear if you were sitting on a bench at South Head on a sunny morning: ocean waves washing up against the cliffs, birds tweeting, leaves rustling in the wind, random ambient comforting sounds of nature.

Gradually, more unexpected sounds appear as the narrative leaps through time. The sounds are always immersive, coming from above, behind and around, as you typically hear them, so the participant feels emplaced.

A breathless jogger runs toward you from the path behind; you inevitably turn to look as the non-existent jogger runs past. A helicopter buzzes overhead—as they often do on search-and-rescue missions. A strange sound emerges—a grumbling from deep in the earth. It's the "earth-sound" (more on that later). A woman whispers in your left ear. A man whispers to your right. This couple sitting on either side of you come and go, gently steering the narrative and helping to fill in the gaps while providing a meta-discourse.

We hear an archival interview with Don Ritchie describing how many people he talked back from the edge.[3] A dog barks: Rexie, the German Shepherd, saved 30 people from jumping off the cliffs in the 1960s.[4]

Canons blast. Menzies declares war. The site is reimagined as a military zone, which it still is today with HMAS Watson sited on the northern tip. A ship crashes into the cliffs on a stormy night, and a melancholic 121-key underwater piano concerto honours the 121 passengers who perished with the Dunbar in 1857 (one key is played for each person who drowned along with 100 pianos in the cargo, now lying at the bottom of the sea).[5] [6]

We hear the arrival of the First Fleet, the landing of the scout boats at Camp Cove and Governor Arthur Phillip's men encountering the Eora fisherwomen.[7] We hear the fisherwomen singing in their nowies (canoes)—their voices aren't silenced.[8] In an imagined conversation with Lieutenant William Dawes (the early colony’s official land surveyor by day and unofficial astronomer by night), Patyegarang (a young Gai-mariagal woman who was teaching Dawes the Gadigal language) signals the smallpox epidemic (Devil Devil) that killed so many Gadigal people in 1789. Later she gently explains the gendered spatial system in place at South Head and how the waterway around Camp Cove that the tall ships sailed over is revered as a sacred women's teaching place.[9] [10]

To further conceptualise the unsettled nature of this place, I commissioned an “earth-sound” specific to South Head. As Douglas Kahn (2013) points out in Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts, John Cage is probably the most well-known experimenter when it comes to capturing the sound of the universe, both micro and macro, but he was preceded by an engineer called Karl Jansky who recorded the sounds of the "centre of the galaxy" which were broadcast on American radio in 1933.[11] Inspired by this auditory legacy, I made many field recordings by dropping my mic into the sedimentary sandstone. The base track of the earth-sound is the "heartbeat of the earth", based on the Schumann Resonances, which are ultra-low frequencies (7.83hz) made from lightning strikes that encircle the earth. These spectral electromagnetic waves have been used in neurophysiology to treat anxiety disorders and are said to give a calming sensation to the listener, and, as an extension, to those who may be troubled.[12]

The work ends with sounds similar to those heard at the beginning: the gentle rolling of waves; the Eora fisherwoman singing to Country. It has gone full circle—the aural mise-en-scène is alive and continuous and still becoming.

Note: This site-specific soundwork is best experienced at the Don Ritchie Grove, located a few minutes’ walk from The Gap lookout.

The soundwork is also featured on a History Lab podcast:
https://omny.fm/shows/history-lab/on-the-edge-the-history-of-sydneys-south-head

[1] Approximately 50 suicides occur at The Gap annually. Ross, V., Koo, Y. W., & Kõlves, K. (2020). A suicide prevention initiative at a jumping site: A mixed-methods evaluation. EClinicalMedicine, 19, 100265.

[2] "Ruptured space" is a term I've coined to acknowledge a fractured sense of place, a spatial history that has been disturbed.

[3] Ritchie, Donald, 1926-2012 & Ritch, Diana, 1943- (2005-12-20). Donald Ritchie interviewed by Diana Ritch

[4] For more information on Rexie the 'Wonderdog', see https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/animals-vegetarianism/rexie-the-australian-heroine.html

[5] When the passenger ship Dunbar crashed into South Head's cliffs on a stormy night in August 1857, killing 121 passengers and crew, media reports described the melancholy shipwreck as the greatest tragedy the young colony had experienced. A hundred pianos were amongst the cargo. Power, J. (2018, 20 August 2018). How one man survived 'saddest episode' in Sydney history Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/121-dead-how-one-man-survived-saddest-episode-in-sydney-history-20180820-p4zyid.html

[6] Anonymous. (1857). A narrative of the melancholy wreck of the Dunbar [Pamphlet]. Published for the proprietors by James Fryer Sydney.

[7] Nagle, J. (1775). Memoir titled "Jacob Nagle his Book AD One Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty Nine May 19th". Canton. Stark County, Ohio, 1802.

[8] Karskens, G. (2011). The Colony. Allen & Unwin. In The Colony, Karskens's influential work on the early years of Sydney, she argues that a "female geography" was firmly in place and can be seen in the language used by the people of South Head to describe themselves ‘Birra Birra is the Sow and Pigs Reef off Camp Cove at the entrance to Sydney Harbour. Dharawal women today still know Birra Birra, or Boora Birra, place of water, surf and fish, as a women's teaching place.' (p. 44).

[9] Gibson, R. (2012). 26 Views of the Starburst World: William Dawes at Sydney Cove 1788-91. UWA Publishing. Gibson outlines William Dawes's cultural and language exchange with Patyegarang.

[10] Fishing for answers (No. S1E5 ) History Lab, 2018. I joyously found the excerpt of the Eora fisherwomen singing when researching the fisherwomen's songs. As historian Anna Clarke explains on the podcast, "The French explorer Louis de Freycinet was so intrigued by a Sydney fisherwoman’s song in 1819, that he tried to write it down. But it’s still so elusive. We don’t know if he heard the song himself or was given the transcript". The song was created specifically for the History Lab podcast, under the guidance of Maddison Lyn Collier, a proud Gundungurra and Darug woman and singer. Allinson, T., Kopel, N., Clark, A., Sentance, N., Ella, T., & Colllier, M. L. (2018, 25 July 2018). Fishing for answers (No. S1E5 ) In History Lab. E. Lancaster & A. Clark. https://historylab.net/s1ep5-fishing-for-answers/

[11] Kahn, D. (2013). Earth sound Earth signal: energies and earth magnitude in the arts. University of California Press.

[12] Ray, R. W. (2017). Isochronic Tones in the Schumann Resonance Frequency for the Treatment of Anxiety: A Descriptive Exploratory Study (Doctoral dissertation, Saybrook University).