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Delta Sierra Juliet Explores the mysterious 1978 disappearance of pilot Frederick Valentich and the theories surrounding it. (2019)
Field Theory (Jason Maling, Martyn Coutts, Anna Schoo – with guest Shannon Quinn)
Australian National Aviation Museum, Moorabbin
Presented as part of Six Moments in Kingston (City of Kingston)
Delta Sierra Juliet was an immersive, participatory work built around the 1978 disappearance of trainee pilot Frederick Valentich. Shortly after departing Moorabbin Airport, Valentich reported an unidentified aircraft circling above him. He was never heard from again.
Field Theory used this unresolved event as a point of entry into a broader exploration of communication, transmission and belief. Working in partnership with the Australian National Aviation Museum, the project unfolded as a guided journey through fragments of evidence, speculation and narrative drift.
Participants moved through a system of signals. Radio transcripts, phonetic codes, anecdotal accounts and conspiracy theories circulated without settling into a single explanation. Language operated as both tool and problem. Messages were transmitted, received and misheard. Meaning accumulated through repetition, distortion and interpretation rather than clarity.
The work leaned into the instability of communication systems. Aviation language, designed for precision, became porous. The phonetic alphabet, intended to reduce error, opened into ambiguity. The distinction between fact and fiction blurred as audiences navigated a field of partial information and competing narratives.
Rather than reconstructing the event, Delta Sierra Juliet staged the conditions around it. It positioned participants inside a live process of sense-making, where orientation was never fully secured and certainty remained just out of reach.
