5000 Calls

The tree filled plaza surrounding Telstra Stadium is called the Urban Forest. Within the four and a half hectares of eucalypts planted in this forest, is an intriguing artwork entitled ‘5,000 Calls’, a sound environment of the human voice.

As you move through the Urban Forest you will hear many voices captured while performing numerous tasks – from the calls of weightlifters, skateboarders, gymnasts, footballers and cricketers, to Vietnamese river chants and the singing of Aboriginal children. The charged atmosphere of the Moari haka is there, along with the noises of stockmen herding cattle and the slow breathing of a dancer.

The sounds are emitted from 80 speakers discreetly placed in the light poles. Australian artists, David Chesworth and Sonia Leber recorded 5,000 different sounds of human activity, including sporting cries, fragments of song and many other vocal noises to create "a soundscape of human effort". The artists explain “5,000 Calls can be seen as a kind of crowd composed of many individual voices which constantly combine and recombine in different ways. When new voices are introduced by visitors travelling through the space, they contribute to the evolving libretto, which is occasionally punctuated by the extraordinary sudden roar of the stadium crowd."

A special computer program changes the order in which the sounds are played, so that each visit to the Urban Forest provides the listener with a new experience.

For more information visit www.waxsm.com.au.

To download video and audio files on the development of the “5000 Calls” artwork visit the Urban Art Audio Video Gallery .