COLLABORATION- SOUND RESOURCES AND FORAGED ITEMS FOR EXHIBITION

( This is Avebury where I took multiple recordings heard in the piece for this collaboration exhibition )

for this collaborative exhibition I have not only been asked to create a forest path but to have sound with the installation too. The sounds I have chosen are all from my field recording library. These sounds have been collected over the past three years. Some come from my time at Avebury on the spring equinox in 2024. These sounds are mainly of the birds singing in the early hours of the morning recorded on an H5 zoom around the stone circles and ancient trees. Others come from Eridge deer park, one of the oldest ancient woodlands in England, a place that I frequently use in my work. In these recordings you can hear birds, leaf patterns in the wind and an overall soundscape of the area, these were taken on an H5 zoom, a tellinga parabolic mic and an H3. Other recordings were also taken on the boarder of Wales in Cound where i used a tellinga parabolic mic to record birdsong in a local abandoned quarry.

( This is me at Avebury taking the recordings )

My idea for the sound is to create a ‘dampened forest’ mimicking that of the set I will create around the sound. As the space in which the exhibition will be held has loots of room for rebverberation I have to be careful in the way I present the sound. When we scouted out the area we collective talked about this issue. We all agreed that we wanted some kind of sound to mark the start of the exhibition. These will be curtains in place that will help contain the sound. As you step into the doorway the curtains will be opened by the person checking people into the exhibition. So I wanted to create a really immersive atmosphere where the viewer feels transformed into a new space.

( This is one of the areas in Eridge deer Park where I took some of the recordings heard in this piece )

I am aware that I am not the only person using sound in the exhibition so I have to be conscious of the placement of the other person as I can see already that the bleed will be quite load. Although, this is a factor that we weren’t all opposed to. As the space itself has these containers which each have a set of taps in which run actual water through, we wanted to incorporate that bleed somehow into the sound that I was making. So after reflection I wanted to use natural material guided by the water, just like when your on a walk and you suddenly hear water, the close you get the loader you get, so in a way it is like a pilgrimage to get to the exhibition through the entrance.

( This is the quarry in Cound where I took some of the recordings of birds heard in the piece )

The only thing that I question about this piece is that people will be coming to the exhibition when it is dark outside, walk in and suddenly they are greeted with the sound of birds. Something that I like to do in my work is be harmony with he day and the seasons. Luckily the majority of these field recordings I will be using were taken throughout spring time as that is when the birds are most audible but unfortunately the exhibition is held in the evening and has no light within the space itself other than manufactured light. Although this is not applicable with this space I think in a way it makes it a more transformative experience.

The foraged items for this set have come from lots of different parts of the countryside. The larger foliage has been leant to me by a friend who is a florist and forages all of her items from the English countryside. She had previously lean’t me all of these items for my past 2 exhibitions and very kind has lean’t them to me again. Other items such as the moss has come from my home in Dorset where is grows like crazy and was very bountiful so I wasn’t distracting an ecosystem by taking and from it. Other items such as the leaves have come from Eridge Park where I took many of these field recordings heard in the piece. Many of these items have been recycled from my previous exhibitions, such as the chicken wire which I will re use in this set to create very minute mounds to be covered in soil and moss. I have also kept from my past exhibitions the silver birch branches which in my exhibition for gallery 46 I created a framing for the doorway seen in my previous blog post. I will re use these branches to create ‘mini trees’ and the branches themselves drape so beautifully.