NCM is situated on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people. We pay respects to them, especially their Elders and storytellers, as well as all First Peoples, nationwide. NCM acknowledges that communication technologies have a long history here, far longer than European occupation.

Rowan Savage Interview | The Making of Carrion Sentience

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Interview

This interview with Rowan Savage (salllvage) accompanies his work Carrion Sentience, commissioned by the National Communication Museum (NCM) for the exhibition Signal to Noise.

Carrion Sentience is a sound-based work by Rowan Savage (salllvage), a First Nations artist, experimental producer, and sound theorist.

The piece explores identity, machine translation, and interspecies connection through field recordings, AI, and electronics. This video features an interview with Rowan alongside footage from his live performance at the Signal to Noise exhibition launch on 12 April 2025. He shares the processes and ideas behind Carrion Sentience—a work that asks what it means to be human, animal, machine, or something in between.

Carrion Sentience includes field recordings of the wagahn (crow), captured on Kombumerri Country (Gold Coast). These sounds are run through glitching AI systems that attempt to translate bird calls into human language, creating a speculative sonic space where Indigenous futurisms speak back to colonial logics.

Rowan reflects on how the work came to be, what he hopes audiences will take from it, and how it has transformed the way he experiences the world.

About the work

Carrion Sentience, 2025

Sound installation: field recordings (wagahn/crows on Rowan’s Country), AI, electronics

Commissioned by NCM Part of Signal to Noise, NCM

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Filmed at NCM on Wurundjeri Land.

We pay our respects to Elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.

Performance footage filmed by Dave Meagher.