K-h! ⟦ǂã̙⟧
Caves Gallery / National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Design Week, 2024
Presented to the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) Art Club
Featured on ABC Arts and in Art Monthly

K-h! ⟦ǂã̙⟧ explores the sounds of a baby to consider pre-linguistic speech.

From the age of one week to four months, the vocal sounds of a baby were recorded. The pitches and rhythms of these sounds were then translated into Western music notation. This notation was subsequently converted into a visual music code and embedded into a series of beaded works.

In this process, the wetness, bubbliness, and fleshiness of the baby’s sounds were lost; the voice was separated from the body. This attempt to categorise the baby’s untranslatable sounds omitted an element of her uniqueness. However, by analysing the coded sounds, repetitions and patterns emerged, revealing insights that might have gone unnoticed at the time.

Three essays by linguist Dr Adele Gregory, artist Helen Johnson and writer Roslyn Orlando accompany the exhibition.

Photos by Tasha Tylee.