Rudi Rudi

Hi everyone,


My name is Rudi. I am a sound artist and a sound environmentalist.

I would like here to talk about one piece that will be presented on Wednesday night at the Black Dove Body Bar yoga space.


The Colours of Silence

After years of listening to the sound environment, I draw pleasure from hearing all the richness of nature and wilderness sounds. They are music to my ears.

I have always loved insects songs. For Europeans, these are the songs of summer, a long awaited season after the long and cold months of winter. With these songs come the sun, the heat and holidays!
Here in Australia, particularly in Queensland, insects songs are heard a large part of the year, more loudly too during the hot season.

One summer evening, on Straddie, the sun setting was spreading its spectacular orange colours over the whole landscape and the air was vibrating from all the stridulations of surrounding insects. This moment of absolute beauty, of great peace and yet great intensity was so inspiring that I dreamt of a concert-event in the middle of the bush that would aim at bringing listeners to experience this sound environment as music. I imagined a composition made from insect sounds and designed to blend with the live insects of the concert environment.
This is how The Colours of Silence was born, and it was performed for the first time on Straddie, not far from Blue Lake, in the middle of the bush. Since then, I have had other opportunities to present the work this way; most recently, in the magnificent setting of the Lake Cootharaba region on the Sunshine Coast.

With this work I try to bring people to listen to the environment with the same intention, attention and intensity as they would to music. Or as if it was music.
So this work has both the ambition to blend into the environment, not appear very different, so to be a ‘natural music’ and to be musical enough to bring people to listen to it with a musical ear.

This outdoor sound environmental piece works also, though differently, indoor. Its contemplative, discreet and warm qualities lead me to present it in intimate settings as ‘meditation music’ to be listened to with closed eyes, lying down.

The Colours of Silence indoors has been performed and/or broadcast in France, Mexico, England, Portugal and in Australia (Perth, Melbourne, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Brisbane Powerhouse, La Boite Theatre, Sandgate and in many small private concerts).

The Colours of Silence is dedicated to the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.