Location Recording
All soundscapes are intended by the artist to be played on loudspeakers in stereo format. Headphones, though the most common means of listening in digital format, do not impart the tangible physicality of these sounds by design.
Cuckemere Audio Trail: Southdowns National Park
Five Part Series produced for the South Down's National Park.The Cuckmere Accessible Audio Trail connects people with the sights, sounds and seasonal changes of this breathtaking coastal gem that’s home to dozens of species, such as chiffchaffs, kingfishers, adonis blue butterflies, and yellow horned poppies.
The trail follows the Cuckmere Miles Without Stiles route along flat concrete, gravel and grass paths, making the trail suitable for people of all fitness and mobility levels.
Walkers simply need to scan a QR code – conveniently located on public benches – to tune in to an immersive audio that delves into the wonderful wildlife at the country park.
Into The Wild is a recorded sound excursion from Brighton Station to Stanmer Park, discovering sound marks of the city and its enchanting environs, winding up in the unique garden community of Stanmer Organics to celebrate World Listening Day 2023. This is a sonic journey of a soundscape from Brighton translation to Stanmer Organics community agricultural plot.
Integrated Soundscapes: Brighton
Project Documentation
Track Listing
Integrated Soundscapes: Brighton is a series of location recordings, highlighting pairs of opposites that exist in the sound environment. The work is inspired by Walter Benjamin's enigmatic concept: the dialectical image, as described in The Arcades Project manuscripts (1934). Through the juxtaposition, montage and superimposition of the sound sources, the variations embody a surrealistic perspective of space and place. Additionally, each composition consists of combining multiple points of audition between two or more locations, creating a multivalent image of place in simultaneity. Each piece centers around one or more preconceived oppositional tensions determined by the artist. Examples include temporal categorizations such as day vs. night, conceptual oppositions such as noise vs. music, or in more metaphorical ways,a polarized human response to the Covid 19 pandemic. Within each soundscape additional tensions may be explored within the physicality and spatialization of the sounds themselves. Resulting relationships become inextricably linked into an inseparable whole. These imagined landscapes of sound form a dream image interpretation of the world manifested through the raw materiality of sound. Akin to the art critic John Berger’s analysis of landscape as a way of seeing, Integrated Soundscapes: Brighton presents soundscape beyond its mechanical representation into a way of hearing. The artist's notes on each piece are also an integral part of the work and can be found in the documentation.
Battle 2020 (for loudspeakers)
Battle (2020) is a soundscape reconstructed from recordings made in 2013 that document Guy Fawkes night ceremonies in the historic town of Battle, UK. As a by-product of free time during the COVID-19 Global pandemic lockdown, many artists have taken the time to go back and reexamine their sound libraries. In the context of a quieter world with a prohibition on communal gatherings, these recordings seemed to speak to a former time where celebration seemed a normal natural way of life. This recording is a resolute rejoinder to isolation, to quiet stagnation. It is therefore intended to be played on loudspeakers at higher volumes. My aim here is to foster a boisterous, hopeful response to remind us of what makes us human - the desire to be entertained and social by our very nature. During the Covid-19 pandemic, our spirits march forward with determination as we celebrate the past.
The Mast p.I
The Mast: pI & p.II documents a cyclical event in the Eastern Woodlands of the United States. Known as a “mast year”, local Oak trees produce an extraordinarily high yield of acorns. Scientists are unable to predict when mast years occur, but there are some theories that link it to weather patterns every 5 to 10 years. This recording captures this unpredictable event as it transforms the sonic imprint of a normally quiet suburban neighborhood. The recordings were taken between the hours of 11PM and 3AM on a particularly still, hazy night. Distant highway traffic can be heard from at times. The sounds of the acorns falling coordinate to produce percussive orchestra, pinging off house eaves and car roofs, rolling down driveways, slamming the pavement, ripping through the leaf canopy, thudding onto lawns, and even splashing in a neighbor’s pool.
Download the Mast I in Quadraphonic sound:
The Mast p.II
As the suburban Long Island neighborhood turns over to the next generation of homeowners, many old growth oak trees have been clear cut. This decision to reduce clutter and cleanup will ultimately result in the disappearance not only of habitat for migrating songbirds, but the unique soundscape event that occurs in The Mast I. In p.II, hired landscapers rev up leaf blowers, chainsaws, and industrial tree grinders, into a cacophony of machine noise. At once a documentation of destruction of habitat on a local level, together, the Mast p.I and p.II serve as a microcosm for the changes facing the planet today.
40°54'06.9"N 73°00'20.3"W
MM-9 Binaural Lavs placed inside metal piping near busy County Road 83, in Long Island, New York
Twin Transects: Parallel Walks in Newhaven and Dieppe
Twin Transects: Parallel Walks in Newhaven and Dieppe is influenced by both Tuan's ground-breaking geographical work, Space and Place (1977) and anthropologist Tim Ingold's meditative works, Lines: a Brief History (2007) and The Life of Lines (2015). These texts provided the inspiration to develop a methodology for documenting two equidistant walks across the port towns of Newhaven, UK and Dieppe, FR, separated by the English Channel, and connected by the DFDS Seaways Ferry. The work seeks to engage the senses through sound, juxtaposing the distinct sounds of Newhaven, Dieppe and the Ferry to compose a unified regional soundscape. Full documentation can be found below.
Click PDF to Download Project Documentation :
Twin Transects: Project Journal
Part 1 of Twin Transects: Newhaven, the recording features sound from inside the holes in Newhaven's seawall recorded with the versitle MM-BSM-9 Binaural Stereo Microphones.
Part 2 of Twin Transects: DFDS Seaways Ferry, features the powerful, physical drones of the ferry engine as it approaches Newhaven Harbor, and the cavernous percussive sounds from inside the hull as the cargo trucks unload their freight.
Part 3 of Twin Transects: Dieppe conveys the nuanced sound of multiple locations including the inside and outside of Le Café des Tribunaux, workers breaking down their merchant tents in the square while playing football, and the bells of Saint Jacques Church.
East Sussex Soundwalk Recordings
Taken on a walk through the South Downs in East Sussex UK using a Zoom H4N 48khz, 24bit. I stopped by an opening along a fence, 50 meters from local fencemakers and recorded in a light rain. Local fencemakers discuss their technique while hammering and sawing away