I was invited to go to Castlemaine, Victoria, AU for the first 2 weeks of October to make some recordings for a sound installation to be exhibited next March as part of the Vitoria Arts Fest. Here is section of what is to be a larger 4 channel piece...

This piece is composed of sounds recorded at the Old Castlemaine Gaol, Castlemaine, Victoria, AU on 10/5-6/2018.

There are a number of unidentified sounds in this recording. Many of the knocks and bangs were not created by me or anyone else on location. I was locked in the jail during the day so that local ghost hunters and tourists couldn't get inside. If that wasn't creepy enough I hung out in some tight, smelly cells where the air was so thick inside that I could feel the oppression. There is one part of this piece where you can hear what sounds like a child's voice (its towards the end where the hiss is loudest (yes there were kids in this jail. See below). I have hours of footage I haven't even listened to yet. Some of the recordings contain more possible EVP but I didn't want to get sidetracked and miss my deadline for completing this. I will be getting into this some more by the end of the year.

I produced a very quick 4 channel piece with some of these recordings along with other clips from the jail that was exhibited on10/12 for the Australian Art Lands Conference. The work will be completed for an exhibition in the jail in March of 2019.

So, the "gaol" as the Aussies spell it was one of the most brutal prisons in the country. It is over 150 years old and was operable up into the 90s. There were too many executions and some of the bodies are buried in the exercise yard. It contained men and women and when local kids were orphaned they would be handed to the women inmates to be raised. Theres a creepy rocking horse in the gaol that the inmates made for these kids - out of wood from the gallows! I didn't sit on it, no way man.

The gaol was designed as a pan-octagon. If a guard stood in the middle of the 3 halls of cells he could hear sounds from all directions evenly. That means that a whisper travels 100 feet with clarity. The dungeon where I decided to record at night (why?!) with the help of Adam Leslie was dank and thick. The dome ceiling made for some great slap back echos. The solitary cells were incredibly eerie. The bottom of the cell doors had dents from inmates trying to kick them open.
I recorded much of these sounds binaurally with the Seinhizer Smart Headset and in stereo with the Shure MV88.
Funding for this trip and equipment came from the NEA, 3Arts, UIC, and the Cliff Dwellers Club through High Concept Labs.

This stereo mix was debuted on 10/25/18 at the High Concept Labs' Open House at Constellation, Chicago, IL.