Jill Scott

AURALROOTS is an interactive media work that explores listening as a form of embodied learning. Its form is inspired by stereocilia, the microscopic hair cells in the inner ear that translate sound into neural signals, and it invites visitors into a speculative, immersive interior of the ear. Wearing headphones and using a touch screen that displays a dynamic rendering of the cochlea, they can blend up to 54 sound tracks across three registers, each linked to a different way of acquiring knowledge through listening. The low frequencies evoke the experience of a foetus in the womb, recorded with contact microphones placed inside the wombs of volunteering women. The mid frequencies carry oral knowledge passed down by Australian Indigenous women, stories of plants, survival and care told by First Nations speakers. The high frequencies draw on Scott’s residencies in audiology laboratories, with recordings of neural activity and reflections on hearing loss and tinnitus. Across all three, Scott treats listening as ‘an active, participatory process,’ proposing a model of learning that is ‘embodied, relational, and multisensory.’