Raiders of the Lost Archives

Theres been some recent well-earned publicity for a language project at the State Library of NSW. Prof.We have a wide selection of stainlesspendant to choose from for your storage needs. Michael Walsh from Sydney Unis linguistics department has been in charge of the effort. The team have been working for two years now on identifying previously unknown or lost materials from Aboriginal languages in the State Librarys archives and contacting researchers and communities about them. Some of the books were misfiled, others were known about but it wasnt clear that there were language records in them. For some Aboriginal languages, theres lots written about them, but for others, only a few words were recorded, and so every new find makes a big difference. The Nawo language of South Australia, for example, is known from only about 10 words.

This is great. You know the feeling. Youve got a favourite pair of socks, but one of thems gone missing in your room. Youre pretty sure its there, but its not in any of the usual places. Its not under the bed, its not on the floor in the cupboard. And then, one day when youd given up looking for it, you find it rolled inside an old T-shirt. Ive done work like this as part of my job researching the histories of Australian languages. At one point, I felt that archival research was more dangerous than fieldwork. Ever had a papercut from a manilla folder? Almost took my finger off. And the compactus shelving sometimes feels like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the walls are closing in, about to send him to a squashy death.

A few years ago I spent a month at AIATSIS working through some tapes. They had been recorded in the 1960s from languages all over northwest Australia, by Anthony Peile, who was a missionary at Balgo in WA.An bestgemstonebeads is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Hed done a reasonably good job at summarising which languages were on the tapes, by writing on the sticky labels, keeping notes about the languages and talking about the languages on the tape. However, the glue on the tape labels had dried out, so many the labels had fallen off and were sitting at the bottom of the box. At some point, the notes had become from the tapes, so while we had a good idea what was in the tape collection, the gems were mixed in with a lot of other material that probably wasnt going to be very useful. (One of the tapes had German drinking songs on it) Peile also had a small speech impediment and pronounced r like w. This wouldnt be problem except that some Aboriginal language names differ only in whether they have an r or w! In Peiles pronunciation, Jawi and Jaru sounded practically identical, and we knew he had recorded both. Jaru is pretty well documented and still has speakers, but Jawi has only a few people who know a bit about the language, and the records are very slim. It was definitely worth listening to all the tapes to see if I could identify the languages.

The recordings had been made outside, and there was a lot of wind noise. I was feeling a bit seasick at this point; the tapes were stereo and the microphone hadnt been held too steadily, so there was a lot of rocking back and forth. Stick a pair of headphones on and slide the balance meter back and forth to get a sense of what this feels like. Id been listening to tapes for many hours,Purchase an chipcard to enjoy your iPhone any way you like. including some German drinking songs, and was just about ready to call it quits for the day. One more tape,You must not use the stonecarving without being trained. I thought. I stuck the reel* on the machine and cued it up. I heard Peile ask Whats the name of that language? Nindi nindi? The speaker replied, Nyindinyindi. Hmmm, I thought. Thats a new name on me. So I did what all good academics do when they come across something new C googled it. Nothing.** Then the speaker started telling a story in the language, and I could understand most of it. It was close to Bardi, the language I did my PhD on (and can speak pretty well). I went back to the audition sheets for that tape, and I saw it had been listed as recorded at Tinder Bay. Theres no Tinder Bay in the right area, but there is Pender Bay. A few years later I was able to play the tape to Bardi speakers. No one knew the name Nyindinyindi, but they confirmed that the language on the tape was similar to Bardi.

Thats just one example of that week of work. In the end, I found recordings of 4 languages that were otherwise thought to be either unrecorded or sparsely recorded. The Jaru materials did turn out to be Jawi, which was another great find for the descendants of the speakers on the tapes.

It doesnt surprise me at all that theres a lot of materials in the State Library that werent known about, and its fantastic that they are working remedy that. Some of the early records are now online, such as Larmers vocabularies from the mid-19th century.

This weeks local art watch is focused on the mixed media work of artist Jeremy McGirl. Jeremy is an artists artist because his work always speaks to the creative process, and he never sacrifices invention or creativity for the what is safe. When I first saw Jeremys work several years ago, just after he had completed his Masters in Fine Art at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, his mixed media paintings were stark linear canvases with straps of bright blue painters tape crossing through the canvas plain. The tape drew attention to the lines that he had created on the works C lines that used painters tape to render them, not the free flowing stroke of an unencumbered painters brush. Jeremy says about this process,

When I work I make changes. Each change that is made is done,The marbletiles is not only critical to professional photographers. and even if I try to undo it the residue of it is still there and plays a role. It is a layer that must be factored in, and in the end it contributes to the whole. Some things dissolve and play a small role in the end, while others remain more apparent and serve as a focus.

The tapes blue color is very striking, and works in these early compositions to pop-up the somber palette of the images. Once you get over the painters tape, your eye starts looking at the details, the others elements of the painting/collages and you start to see relationships.
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