CAMERON DEYELL

We’re noisy neighbours.

We make clumsy sonic choices.

Sound is too often an afterthought – a by-product. When we remove ourselves from the noisy world of human design, one of the first things that happens is our ears relax. We finally start to hear what has always been there. The ebb and flow of the natural sonic environment. When we finally take time to listen, we make space to think.

The best way to remove ourselves from the noise of the modern world is to sail away. As we leave the shore, it doesn’t take long for even the most stubborn of human made sounds to fade. The roar of traffic becomes a rumble then a whisper, and then it’s gone. We’re now free. Free to settle and to arrive. Our ears find a new resonance. They move with wave and wind and we hear a pattern of movement that’s bigger than us. Bigger than anything.

Sonic Compass is a sound sculpture and musical composition that charts a journey through listening. Composed aboard a sailboat on a voyage along Australia’s East Coast, it traces a path shaped by water, wind, and memory.

Presented as a circular array of speakers arranged in the formation of a compass rose, sound drifts from point to point—like stars across a navigational sky. The work acts as a vessel for sonic escape, inviting audiences to enter a space of resonance and reflection.

Sonic Compass explores sonic wayfinding, musical drift, and eco-acoustic resonance. But more than that, it makes a quiet proposition: that taking time to listen—to truly slow down and attend to our surroundings—is itself an act of resistance.