“Sound is free flowing, you can’t put it in a frame or behind a glass case, it permeates its environment, fully saturating every space it occupies.”
– Julian Wessels.
A sound designer by trade, Julian works closely with cultural institutions to deliver stunning audio content throughout NSW and Australia. He worked recently with Jonathan Jones in his newest installation for the Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA. Untitled (giran), is a striking 48-channel soundscape that incorporates over 2000 separate sculptures in a mesmerising sonic field. He has worked with institutions to bring collections to the public in new and innovative ways, most recently with 80Hz, a collaboration between architect Thomas Wing-Evans and the DX Lab at the State Library of New South Wales. 80Hz is an outdoor sound pavilion that saw 40 paintings from the library’s collection transformed into musical compositions. In a uniquely hands-off approach to composition, Julian created a program that took the metadata associated with each painting and used that metadata to generate each composition. He has also worked with the War Memorial, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Waltzing Matilda Centre, Kaldor Public Art Projects and the National Museum of Australia to create podcasts, audio tours, and immersive audio installations.
In 2020, Wessels was inspired by a glass plate negative in the Powerhouse collection to create a binaural sound work using location recordings from Pearl Bay, Sydney.
Learn more about Julian Wessels.
