Update 20 March 2020:

Due to current circumstances, Arts House’s presentation of Wallpaper III & IV by Del Lumanta has been cancelled.

For further information or enquiries, please contact Arts House on 03 9326 3720.

Read a statement by Arts House’s Artistic Director Emily Sexton here.

Our cities once sang to us. In elevators and lobbies, concourses and restaurants the compositions sneeringly dubbed Muzak sought to provide a soundtrack to our lives without attracting our attention. The challenge to composers was to make music that would go unnoticed, but today music fanatics around the world study and collect these curious artefacts of aural camouflage.

Del Lumanta’s Wallpaper series explores the untapped potential of background music in our everyday environments.

Take an elevator ride and listen to these site-specific works that treat sound as material, responding to and synthesizing the histories and recent events of Arts House itself. ‘Elevator music’ has variously been used to manipulate mindsets, relax commuters, sculpt spending habits and encourage productivity: could these unreal echoes of a place outside of time be used to create connections instead?

Del Lumanta is a Sydney-based artist, musician, DJ, educator and organiser. With the Wallpaper series, they invite us to listen to the sound of our city we were never supposed to hear.

Wallpaper III and IV are part of Spectral: a series of installations and performances that dive into the spaces between sound and light. From immersive interruptions that capture the mind, to synaesthetic voyages beyond the boundaries of the body, these works demand to be experienced.