context

The metropolitan coastal area where I live was, in pre-European times, an area of reedbeds, home to the Kaurna people and to many species of aquatic birds and animals. In Australia, the term 'pre-European' refers to that time before invasion by a technologically oriented, dominant culture- little more than 150 years ago.

These days there is a small remnant of reedbeds left- a haven of sorts, surrounded by suburbia. Until the plague that mysteriously infected frog populations world-wide took its toll, the reedbeds were inhabited in large numbers by a species of frog called the Eastern Banjo Frog (Limnodynastes dumerili). Each frog has a unique call which sounds like a banjo string plucked. In chorus these amphibians create a striking 3D soundscape.

In the spring of 2000 I happily noted the return of the Banjos to the otherwise hushed environment. This web site is both an emotional and a theoretical statement arising from my frustrated attempts to document the return of the Banjo using spherical photographic and digital recording hardware and 3D visualisation software.  I never saw a Banjo, though I looked and searched. I did hear some- a dozen or so in a sparse chorus.

Ashley Holmes, March 2001.

enter 'algorhythm'

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