Flat Lines

R Murray Shafer, in The Soundscape drew my attention to this phenomena.
He identified sounds, almost exclusively associated with the industrial or machine age. The Flat Line in sound is the result of repeated sounds such as motors and machines. Prior to the industrial revolution, sounds made in construction, craft and agriculture consisted of small sounds. Small from the point of view of the sustain element in their sound envelope. Imagine horses hooves, blacksmiths anvils or masons chisels. These would all have been short, abrupt sounds. Now, machines do the work for us and their sound is a monotonous repetition.

Place

Tim Cresswell's book, Place; A Short Introduction has been stimulating my mind this weekend.
I have been dipping into a few books about Human Geography without much success for this project, but Cresswell's book is really interesting.
As it says, it is an introduction, and for me a really interesting way of looking at my project from a slightly different perspective.
A couple of quotes from the book that pertain directly to my thinking:
"We do not live in landscapes - we look at them" Or 'hear' in this case.
"Naming is one of the ways space can be given meaning and become place".
'What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value..." Cresswell quoting Yi-Fu Tuan.

Surrealism

I am becoming increasingly interested in this idea of the sonically surreal. I rejected surrealism for decades as it always seemed so frivolous to me, but, again thanks to the calming influence of the English surrealists over our more bold European cousins, I am beginning to see its application having a potential in my work.
I have been looking in particular at the earlier experiments by Paul Nash and Roland Penrose. It struck me that their surrealistic tendences served their work better once they had experimented with 'full-blown' surrealism and then used that experience to suffuse the following work with surrealistic elements. Often the surreal and the abstract merge, and for me, this is a benefit to the work.

Civilisation 3

Kenneth Clark really made a wonderful set of programmes 40 years ago.
I was most taken with the episode pertaining to the Renaissance and the gradual evolution of landscape painting.

Civilisation 2

Clarke says something interesting in programme 2 about pilgrimages...
" Pilgrimages were undertaken in hope of Heavenly rewards. In fact, they were often used by the Church as a form of penitence, a spiritualised form of extradition. The point of a pilgrimage was to look at relics. The Medieval pilgrim really believed that by contemplating a reliquiae containing the head or even the finger of a saint he could persuade that saint to intercede on his behalf with God".

Civilisation

Whilst not strictly relevant to this project, I am re-watching the DVD collection, Civilisation, first on the BBC in 1969. Written and presented by Kenneth, later Lord Clark is a brilliant example of the last vestiges of that ultra-posh English person.
Lord Clarke has that slightly distorted, slightly horsey dental configuration that only the very posh seem to be able to carry off.
He is a passionate art historian however, so I'm happy, what ever his dental proclivity.

Wait

I decided yesterday evening to experiment as much as possible with short films that pertained directly to a place and then make them work with some sound design.
Hard as it is to admit, as I rue the concept of sound as the poor relation of vision, I find it much easier to have a piece of film and then add audio.
I will be using very simple, almost banal visuals to begin with and work to create sound design that explores and exploits the sound of the place.

Paul Nash

I was reminded today of a great exhibition I visited earlier this year at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Paul Nash: The Elements.
I was looking through the book for the black and white photographs he took. These, like John Piper's and Humphrey Spender's are such simple and gentle images, yet all suffused with a bitter melancholia.
I want to think about this emotion in my sound pieces.

Geoffrey Jones

I bought this wonderful DVD the other week, Geoffrey Jones: The Rhythm Of Film. It contains 9 films of Geoffrey Jones, a documentary and information film maker. These date from 1955 to 2004 and are all superb.
Snow is especially good. It is an almost surreal portrayal of a snowed-in railway system and features a strange kind of pub-rock soundtrack that has been manipulated by Daphne Oram in the most strange but agreeable style suggesting a wild post production session spent over-indulging with an EQ machine. Ravishing, in my opinion.

Farnham

Farnham in Surrey will be my next location for The Sound Of Place project. It is located about 10 miles North East from Alton where I recorded before. A larger town than Alton, so I am expecting to be returning there once I have explored this weekend.
I think I will explore the castle and other historic locations first and see where that leads.

Sound and Music

Sound and Music have an interesting features page called Places. Just as you would imagine, it is about particular places. Big places. They attest to being interested in more contributions which is great. May run The Pilgrims' Way by them.

Pilgrim's Way 2

Digging a little further into the subject to collect my thoughts and put some things into order.
To get to the basics, I am so far considering some of these locations on the route. Winchester and Canterbury cathedrals will, naturally, be there as the start and end, and Alton has secured a place.
Here is a list of other possibilities, New Arlesford, Bentley, Farnham, Guildford, Dorking, Reigate, Gomshall, Merstham, Chaldon, Godstone, Limpsfield, Westerham, Otford, Kemsing, Wrotham, Tottiscliffe, Cuxton, Pewley Down, St Martha's Hill, The Chantries, Rochester, Burnham, Boxley, Detling, Herrietsham, Lenham, Charring, Wye, Chilham.
You will find a nice introduction to the Pilgrims' Way by F. C. Elliston-Erwood from where I purloined the wonderfully Neo-Romantic image above.

Powell and Pressburger 2

Tonight I have watched The Battle Of The River Plate. I would describe this as more sentimental than Romantic, but considering its release date, November 1956 ( just 2 years after rationing) and its overt patriotism, Powell and Pressburger still manage to evoke the majesty and power of the sea and man's frailty within the world. It would seem that no matter how serious the situation, and world war is pretty bloody serious, Man is dwarfed by his surroundings. Powell and Pressburger still impress me with their work.

Cut and Splice 2

After considering the Thursday night Cut and Splice, I am aware of the significance of performance and/or presentation of the work.
I commented below on John Wynne's installation, but think the work of Nicolas Collins and Tetsuo Kogawa was made stronger by the performative angle to their work.
No matter how much artists want to have their work considered just for its own sake, the more accessible it is and accepting of the listeners'/viewers' requirements it is, it seems to me, the better the work is received.
Obviously this should not mean a simplification or dumbing-down of the work, rather, a note for me as an artist that not everybody knows what I am on about and a recognition of that would be sensible.

49th Parallel

I've been watching 49th Parallel, another wonderful Powell and Pressburger film and was struck by the statement in the script; "Don't be a sentimental fool".
I realize the context, but shift that statement to one side a moment, delete "don't" and we have another interesting way of considering art and the Romantic.

Cut and Splice

Yesterday evening was the first of 3 events all of which afford the visitor time to see and hear John Wynne's installation, Beating Tones and Flapping Wings. As with John's previous installation at Beaconsfield and now at the Saachi Gallery, this is a visually arresting sound art piece.
John uses a 440Hz sine tone on each of 30 cassette players which create Beat Frequencies in the listeners' ears. Another phenomena, the Shepard Tone produces in the adjacent room is broadcast back to the radio/cassette players in the first.
I was interested in the exploitation of the sonic effects as I have been dipping into Sonic Experience for inspiration on the application and effect of other sonic phenomena that I can employ in my project.

Alton

I laid down the first track of this project today. Actually quite a nice thing to have something concrete as the starting point. It is just one long exterior track recorded with an air mic.
This track, Alton is the piece that is all about steam.
I have just downloaded Wave Editor software, of which I have as a trial package to see if some experimentation with it will be useful. Just used it for an hour, and I have found a couple of neat tools. I'm going to really have to give it some time though. Like everything.

Watercress Line 2

Spent the day on the wonderful Watercress Line railway yesterday. I have several hours of recordings. What was noticeable throughout the day was the constant hiss of escaping steam. Every recording I have is couched in hiss. I thought it was the equipment for a while, but no, it is everywhere!
I was a bit disappointed at first, but thought that in fact, hiss would be the sonic marker for this location. Layers of hiss.

Justin Bennett

I listened to Bennett's CD Noise Map today to get some more thoughts and ideas about how to represent field recordings and was quite taken with this.
It is not a CD I would say I like listening to, but I really like his use of processing. It is in-your-face stuff with all sorts of noises and sounds jumping at you from all angles. Some sound realistic, some sound processed and some are delightfully ambiguous. He makes no apparent attempt to smooth the pieces along and has no problem in rushing or dawdling the pace. A very stimulating sound work.