Paul Carter is a writer and artist. He lives in Melbourne (Australia), where he has a public space design studio called Material Thinking. He also currently works at RMIT University as Professor of Design (Urbanism). His books include The Road to Botany Bay (1987), The Lie of the Land (1996), Repressed Spaces (2002), Material Thinking (2004), Dark Writing (2008) and Meeting Place (2013). His many public artworks include ‘Nearamnew’ (Federation Square, Melbourne) and ‘Relay’ (Sydney 2000 Olympics). In 2004 a multilingual version of his work ‘What Is Your Name’ was produced in Berlin. He has worked with such companies as Bharatam Dance Company, Stalker Theatre Company and the Liverpool Capital of Culture Committee. His current projects include public art works in Perth and Brisbane and an online gallery of recent poems based on his 2013 publication Ecstasies and Elegies.

Research Project

The Dramaturgy of Turbulence, Part 2

Part 1 of this research project examined the choreography of public sociability. It asked what role might be played by dramaturgy in the development of improved conditions of meeting and coexistence. It reflected on the possibility that the new urban designer might, in fact, be a dramaturg. These speculations raise the question of medium: in what medium is the dramaturgy of turbulence best explored? By its nature turbulence exceeds representation and resists prediction: it can be compared to noise, whose structuration (if, indeed, it exists) resists semiotic or musical rationalization. In Part 2 of this project I review a history of creative research that has used radiophonic and acoustic installation art to explore noisiness or interference at the interface between human movement and urban sound cultures. I develop more theoretical approaches to understanding the physical and affective attributes of auditory space, with a particular focus on the role dialogue between acoustic and electroacoustic performance plays. I also propose a performance (captured on video) of certain Berlin sites; the object here is to cultivate a kind of sound graffiti, based on poems, that suggests traces of passage.

Recommended Publications

• Carter, P., Places Made After Their Stories: Design and the Art of Choreotopography, (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Publishing), 2015.

• Carter, P., Turbulence, Climate Change and the Design of Complexity, (Sydney: Puncher & Wattman), 2015.

• Carter, P., ‘Territorialising Atmospherics: the radiophonics of public space,’ Architecture and Culture, Vol. 3, Issue 2, 245-262.

• Carter, P., ‘Touchez: the Poetics of Turbulence,’ Performance Research, 19:5, 2014, 1-6.

• Carter, P., ‘Pressure: the Political Economy of Air,’ The Journal of Architecture (US), Vol. 19, Issue 2, 2014, Special Issue: City Air, 168-186.