Sound Before Sound II: Auditioning the Archive

Deep within the collection stores in Castle Hill is a glowing sound booth, a site of investigation. Sound Before Sound II: Auditioning the Archive is the work of researchers and artists Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, made in residence at Powerhouse Castle Hill in 2022. Capturing the attempts, strategies and care undertaken by museum staff in activating and recording objects otherwise mute, their work follows sound-making devices such as tuning forks, music boxes, scales, calculators and pencil sharpeners performing once again.

Conservators stroke, prod and push levers, while sound recordists adjust an array of microphones to capture sounds as part of Sounding the Collection – an initiative by Powerhouse to bring objects from the collection into audition and invert the visual hegemony of its online collection. Intrigued by this process and building on their previous investigations into the nature of sound, archives and listening, Leber and Chesworth take inspiration from experimental German artist Werner Nekes' encyclopedic survey of the prehistory of cinema to document the reanimation of objects.

The following quotes from Leber and Chesworth come from an interview conducted for Powerhouse Lates.