Time mirages

On a sacred hill, 

an ancient chant, 

remembered from 

a forgotten cadence.

In slanting rocks, 

the layered mica, 

glinting the semaphore, 

of some metamorphic, 

Primal upheaval.

New shards of glass, 

Lining the tyre tracks, 

Sharp light reflections in patterned red dust. 

Dust and shards, 

overlayed by shadows 

from wire-fence grids, 

a temporary definition, 

on a primordial land.

By the Todd, with 

the dry-sand, river bed, 

defined by white gums, 

the Dolomite boulders, 

in time-worn groupings, 

hold secrets of an extinct sea. 

The dolo-stone reliquies, 

with fossils of perforated sponges, 

small Cambrian cones, 

encased, 

on the vast time, 

marine time, 

desert plains.

Dust and shards 

overlayed by shadows, 

boundary fence grids, 

a temporary definition 

on a primordial land.

Joan Brassil

The sound work was made by Alan Lamb in W.A., on a modified stretch of abandoned telephone wires half a mile long. The surrounding country is a vast undulating plain and the music is made by the wind which causes the wires to vibrate, and because they are so long, the patterns of vibration may shift along an infinite range of possible harmonic combinations. Many other natural forces are also at work to shape the music, the heat of the sun, and cool of the wind, changing the wires' tension, - the flies, birds and insects colliding, resting, crawling, or the movement of wires in their supports. The vibrations are recorded and filtered, thus the music of the original structure is preserved, the art is in the collages which could have arisen naturally in this wire music in the landscape.