Near Turkey's Black Sea coast last year, Sydney-born video artist Angelica Mesiti found herself in a curious world where whistling is used to communicate messages across distance. ''Come in from the fields!'' someone might whistle; or ''Fatma, will you come to visit us tomorrow?''; or, more urgently, ''There is a battalion of soldiers arriving over the hills to the north.''

Whistling as a language - rather than as a musical sound - is an ancient practice and something of a precursor to the mobile phone: easy to use, always on hand and surprisingly effective across large areas. And no monthly cap.

Listening up: Angelica Mesiti's interest is in the cultural aspect of whistling to communicate. Credit:Angela Wylie

When Mesiti, who lives between Sydney and Paris, arrived last year in one particular town near Trabzon to film, it was harvest time, so whistling was being frequently used by the locals: ''Someone might whistle from among the crops to someone else to please bring them a certain tool,'' Mesiti says. ''Or a husband might whistle to his wife in the fields, 'Your sister is here, come and make some tea'.''

Mesiti's work, The Calling, is not only fascinating, it is her first commission by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne. The Ian Potter Moving Image commission, a project by ACMI and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, allowed Mesiti, who also won the Art Gallery of NSW's 2013 Anne Landa Award, to do much research on this curious whistling phenomena, as well as to travel to three countries where the language is at various points of its evolution: Turkey, where it is still happily in use; Greece, where it is nearly extinct, and Spain's Canary Islands, where it is now being revived and taught in schools.