A couple of weeks ago, after Marc posted Junto 753 interpreting the
traffic sign, I was walking to the shops and pondered the "two tracks"
message on the Give Way sign outside the Leeton Rice Mill.
It's not the first time this sign has given me reason to pause and ponder, see https://showcasejase.
So
I sent it to Marc as a suggestion for a Junto and we considered
options, with me promoting a broad interpretation that ranged from
literally having two tracks giving way to each other through to arguing a
Wayne's World-esque "Way!" could also be valid.
In that discussion I also noted that
in the USA a "give way" sign is phrased as "yield" and knew it would
appeal to Marc, because I think one of the fun aspects of the Junto
community are those little insights one gains into other's lives and our locations in this small world we share.
The
various meanings of the word "yield" have become more significant in my
interpretation, which should become apparent by the end of this
reflection.
At the time I resisted pointing out
how the "two tracks" message is erroneous, as a railway track uses two
rails and this particular site has two railway tracks that the road
crosses, which became part of the interpretation that ended up informing
my track for this prompt by using four tracks.
So it's two tracks combined, giving way to another two tracks combined.
Since my exchange with Marc I noticed this Junto project would be my 500th video responding to a weekly prompt from Disquiet.
It's a surprising number, but the biglyness reflects how much enjoyment I've gained from these activities over the years.
Yesterday
I thought I'd look over my playlist and see what suggested itself for
the activity this week, finding a few things that seemed relevant to the
location.
The first is a recording made from
close to the site of the Give Way sign that was made in response to a
project proposed by my compatriot and sometime fellow Cyclic Defrost contributor, Kate Carr.
That
was Junto number 218, and my video shows the Rice Cooperative site that
adds a distinctive hum through most of the year in my town of Leeton,
New South Wales.
Rice is the crop that secured a
future for the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, where Leeton was planned
as an administrative centre, and it was proposed by the manager of the
fruit cannery who the road Brady Way is named for.
Around
the site of the Give Way the road Brady Way becomes Railway Avenue, and
then later becomes Oak Street around where a bridge crosses the tracks,
but none of this is very clear and that's another surprising thing
about the location.
I often think this area in
front of the Rice Cooperative is one of the wildest roads I've driven,
because when you turn the corner you can be travelling at 60km/h and be
confronted by a long freight train in your path or a B-triple truck on the wrong side
of the road.
You will also find trucks parked
wherever they please, including in the area between the two train tracks opposite to the old cindercrete railway station.
It
really surprises me that the road traffic authority haven't taken more
interest in this area, but I suspect the local council realise that it
would impact on the travel of local residents as well as the traffic
servicing the Coop.
By the way, you might sometimes eat
some of the products from this site, as it's marketed as Sunrice and is a
significant Australian brand with a corporate headquarters in town too.
Anyway, the
second of my two tracks is 'Riverside' from Junto 284 and I think I
remember that involved manipulating samples made from an artist working
with river-based clay.
At that time I'd been
reflecting in a soundtrack for an exhibition how the local Murrumbidgee River is part of exports from the industrial agriculture in our region, and thought to
illustrate my track with water escaping from the Coop on a cool night.
The next two tracks used this week are also from Junto projects and there are few ways that the first two give way as I
used a variety of filtering techniques, including EQ and sidechain
compression, as well as effects from Goodhertz and Unfiltered Audio.
These are automated to increase throughout the transition.
The
drums were taken from an early of iteration of the Junto trio projects, number 429, and a personal favourite as they prompted a wonderful spoken response from the poet Sam
Knot.
The footage of the train travelling
through the next railway crossing heading east from the one outside the
Coop came from a self-initiated project I started in 2011 to celebrate
the centenary of Leeton, see https://www.youtube.com/
That video from Ramponi Park was used in Junto project 635, which I think might have
been a direction to use a field recording to give shape to a musical
composition.
In
hindsight, those tracks I made manipulating contact mic recordings of
playgrounds were one of my formative experiences as a musician, and also
reflected in my first Junto video for project 29. (Although, surprising in retrospect,
at the time I wasn't sure it was appropriate and didn't publish it).
See https://www.youtube.com/
The
decision to work with video developed into the "For 100 Years" album
and a series of screenings that I held, with some of that material
contributing to exhibitions at the Griffith Regional Art Gallery in 2019
and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery in 2020.
Recently I
asked ChatGPT what it knew about the artist Jason Richardson from Leeton and the result was skewed toward my electroacoustic work, which
gained the most interest I guess.
Sorry, I seem to have rambled on, but it's been interesting for me to connect a few observations to coincide with this project.
The
Junto is a significant part of my creative practices and I really
appreciate the inspiration it has provided, especially now that I look
back and see it constitutes around half of the material I've published
on Youtube and that's likely a similar ratio on Bandcamp too.
