Select Naturalis 2.0 by The Amplified Elephants

The Amplified Elephants artists describe their sound as:

Teagan Connor: “melodious”

Jay Euesden: “like getting on a train”

Steven Hagiliassis: “relaxing and creative”

Daniel Munnery: “glitch, drone stuff”

Robyn McGrath: “noisy, R2D2”

Kathryn Sutherland: “spaceships”

Esther Tuddenham: “like dreaming”

Natalie Walters: “cars revving up the engines”

The Amplified Elephants are an ensemble produced by JOLT Arts since 2008 and incubated until 2019 as part of the ArtLife program at Footscray Community Arts. In 2015, The Amplified Elephants performed in La La Lullaby at Federation Square (Lights in Winter Festival) and SELECT NATURALIS at Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music, as well as touring Asia with JOLT and performing in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Macau.

Mentored by leading sound artist James Hullick and under management by JOLT, many of The Amplified Elephants’ projects have been presented internationally and in prominent Australian venues. Since 2007, these projects have been increasingly ambitious in scale, often featuring sonic technology: MachiNATIONS International Tour (London, Edinburgh, Tokyo 2014), RE:EVOLUTION (Melbourne Festival 2014), SELECT NATURALIS (BIFEM 2015, RMIT 2018), LA LA LULLABY (Federation Square 2015), SELF SEEKERS (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Macau 2015, Festival of Live Art 2018), SHHHH (Meat Market 2016, Hangzhou, Hong Kong 2017).

The Amplified Elephants co-curated and performed at the JOLT Sonic Festival in 2019. In 2021, the Elephants completed the new work Deep Creatures for Flash Forward and the City of Melbourne and released the work on Heavy Machinery Records. In the same year, the ensemble performed the live-stream event Hagoromo as a collaboration with Noh Singer Ryoko Aoki and supported by Slow Label, Japan, Ritsumeikan University and RMIT University.

After releasing five albums in 2 years The Amplified Elephants are looking forward to re-developing an older and shorter work titled Select Naturalis. The new version of the project Select Naturalis 2.0 has been expanded into a full-length production and explores the process of natural selection from the perspective of sound and sounds in the environment.

This production includes The Amplified Elephants working with a bespoke audiovisual interface named Resonance which moves sound through the space via a multi-speaker diffusion system. Resonance has been developed by the Duckworth Hullick Duo and researchers and technologists at RMIT University, and in collaboration with JOLT Arts.