Sound, Cnr of Sydney and Johnston

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Music and art are inextricably linked. Music can intervene with street art to bring out the quality of the work, by renewing the language and elevating it from an underground, subculture to a more positive one. According to Wassily Kandinsky (Napoli, 2012), there is a strong relationship between sounds and colours that can produce feeling and emotions with the viewer/listener.

This end of Johnston St is deep in Collingwood. Impatient drivers, angry with the state of Hoddle St, surround you; the high-rise building of commission flats and the grunge and depression that emanates from them encompasses you and then there is beautiful street art, in all forms of artistic expression and political condemnation.

When you first get to this location you are going to look at the artwork and explore it however you may. But, it must be done silently. After 10 minutes, you will put your headphones on and turn on the following playlist:

1. Karma Police –  Radiohead
2. 1998 – Chet Faker
3. Breathe In – Japanese Wallpaper
4. New Slang – The Shins
5. Oxygen – Willy Mason
6. Michicant – Bon Iver
7. Home – The Falls
8. White Blank Page – Mumford and Sons
9. Blood – The Middle East
10. Never Let Me Go – Florence & The Machine

The atmosphere changes around you. What was a hustling area of urgency and grimy back streets is drowned out by your mellow, calming music and becomes an outdoor museum that can be experienced in an entirely new way.

For the rest of the tour you will experience the sites with sound and emotive music. It sets an alternative perspective to these locations because of the added sense of sound. Alternatively, you can interchange the music for silence to establish different experiences with the same art works.