Philip SAMARTZIS
“Antartica, an absent presence”

Antarctica is a paradox of the sublime and prosaic: with its vast expanses of ice, snow and mountains—and traces of human habitation, from weathered huts to abandoned machinery. It is a blank space bordered by nothingness concealing a confounding set of encounters for those fortunate enough to breach its frozen perimeter. This book is an invitation to share in a remarkable journey to a place that is for all intents and purposes simply incomprehensible. The book is accompanied by two CDs of soundscape compositions documenting natural and anthropogenic characteristics of the frozen continent and its surrounding ocean.
Philip Samartzis is a sound artist, scholar and curator with a specific interest in the social and environmental conditions informing remote wilderness regions and their communities. His art practice is based on deep fieldwork where he deploys complex sound recording technology to capture natural, anthropogenic and geophysical forces. The recordings are used within various exhibition, performance and publication outcomes to demonstrate the transformative effects of sound within a fine art context. He is particularly interested in concepts of perception, immersion and embodiment in order to provide audiences with sophisticated encounters of space and place. Philip is an Associate Professor within RMIT School of Art, and the artistic director of the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture.

Hardcover, 208 pages (24.8 x 2.5 x 18.8 cm)