[The following article was written by Andrea Hooper, Year 11 student at Wyndham College. Trish Keller, our fabulous host from Wyndham emailed it through today!]

On Monday, October 30th, Wyndham College had an exciting visit from the Good Vibrations crew. Michael Luck Schneider, a sound artist, and Bruce Odland, an installation artist fresh from New York city, were accompanied by Lucas Ihlein, Education Officer at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Vic McEwan the preparatory artist at the MCA and Darrin Baker who is making a documentary on the ‘art making’ process. The group have been travelling to various schools in Sydney to work directly with special needs and mainstream students to collect sounds and pictures to incorporate into their artwork. All are part of the MCA’s Bella Program for Youth with Specific Needs.

The caravan in which they have been travelling is an amazingly original environment. It consists of ‘eyes’ which are cameras set up at the front to ‘watch’ what is happening on the outside. There are two screens inside the caravan to display what the cameras are seeing. The caravan also has big pipe structures set up outside in the shape of ‘ears’ with microphones inside. The sound is extremely well picked up and amplified inside, sending vibrations through the floor.

At the other end of the caravan are interactive touch screens. The artists took different pictures from around the school and loaded them on to the computers. If you placed your hands next to the screen and moved them around, the transparency, colours and colour resolution all changed and highlighted different aspects of the image.

All the students who entered the caravan, found it an exhilarating experience and did not want to leave! Eventually, they had to though, because Michael, Bruce, Lucas and Vic took them ‘sound hunting.’ This involved travelling around the school to find things to make sound with such as: banging on signs, capturing the echo between poles and even just the students yelling and laughing. Students also took many pictures to capture lights, shadows and movement.

Near the end of the program, Bruce took the students through all the sounds they had captured and edited them on a computer. He let the students show independence by choosing what sounds they thought went well together in order to create a symphony of their own.

The documentary that Darren Baker is filming will be able to be seen in the front foyer of the Museum of Contemporary Art. The caravan that has created so many experiences already, shall be on display on the lawn outside of the Museum for public viewing from the 4th to the 14th of November and again for the “International Day of People with a Disability” on the 3rd of December.

This was a wonderful experience for our special needs students!