Capturing Distant Sounds: Fulbright Winner Tim Nohe
Tim Nohe,style> associate professor of visual arts, has received a Fulbright Scholars award, one of the nation’s most notable and highly competitive grants. Nohe will use the award in hopes of drawing awareness to the often ignored sounds of Australia’s Botany Bay.
Nohe’s research, entitled, “Sounding Botany Bay,” explores the sonic environment of one of Australia’s richest cultural and natural attractions. Nohe will record sounds from the city of Botany Bay, Sydney Airport and the Botany Bay National Park. He will edit and compose these sounds to create an “immersive surround-sound audio experience.”
“Sonic works challenge us to hear anew what we have chosen to filter out as we move through a noisy world,” said Nohe. “I hope to shape the rich voices and sounds of Botany Bay into an aural tapestry that will heighten and contrast what is and has been there.”
Nohe conducted similar research in 1998 when he participated in the Wendover, USA exhibit, which featured photographs, video and sound installations of the Wendover region. This area includes Wendover, Utah, home to the Bonneville Salt Flats and Wendover Army Air Field, a base that played a key role in the development of atomic weapons during World War II, and West Wendover, Nevada, host to a cluster of gambling casinos. Nohe made numerous samples of the region’s artifacts, including a sound exhibit.
Nohe will present “Sounding Botany Bay” and teach two sound-art courses at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales through June 30, 2007. He hopes to install a sound exhibition at various venues in the city of Botany Bay and create DVDs of the presentation.
Nohe won three Maryland State Arts Council awards and serves as a board member and composer for the performance art group Fluid Movement. His other works have appeared in local venues and international locations such as The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Inter-Society of Electronic Arts, Paris.
(UMBC’s other Fulbright Scholar, John Stolle-McAllister,style> associate professor of modern languages and linguistics, is currently investigating indigenous political movements in Ecuador. A homepage feature story on his research is forthcoming.)
9/11/2006
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