Rising East Online

Now hear this

— David Chapman

Image from Hark
Hark video fast connection
Hark video slow connection

Hark is an audio-visual installation combining photographic images and audio recordings made primarily in Gunpowder Park, a new 90 hectare country park, within the Lee Valley Regional Park. This piece is the first collaboration between wildlife photographer David Cottridge and myself: both of us have been involved in previous sound and image projects based in the Park, but this is the first time we have worked together.

Before discussing the work itself, it might be useful to briefly describe the geographical and institutional context for the work; especially since it is very much a site-specific piece. Gunpowder Park is 90 hectares of green space within the Lee Valley Regional Park which has recently been reclaimed and regenerated from its former use as a Royal Ordnance munitions testing facility. After being a restricted site for the last 100 years, the land has been transformed into a country park managed to create a bio-diverse environment with free access to the public. At the main entrance to the Park there is Field Station which combines an administrative centre and project /exhibition space. Gunpowder Park was also created with a specific remit to provide an innovative programme of arts, science and nature, which is developed and delivered by Landscape+Arts Network Services Ltd (LANS), in partnership with Lee Valley Regional Park Authority. The Park’s heritage of experimentation informs the creative policy and explores the meaning and use of open space in our society through research, arts-led collaborations, education, events and publishing. LANS were very pleased to support the project with its close relationship to the Park’s five programme strands.

Image from Hark (Detail)

Hark is a collaborative work, comprising a series of three combined audio compositions and animated macro-photographic image sequences of 15 minutes’ duration. David Cottridge explores the texture, colour and form of tree bark, lichens and mosses through a series of large-scale macroscopic photographs. The images have been digitally composited and then animated, allowing for the fine detail of the subject to be viewed more intently. Through this process the images begin to transcend their origins, suggesting new landscapes and creating a disconcerting sense of scale and perspective for the viewer. The majority of the images were captured in the woodland area of Gunpowder Park and show the intricate surfaces and sometimes complex ecosystems of the Willow, Grey Poplar and Silver Birch. As well as the audio-visual installation in the gallery space of the Field Station, a series of images as extended prints were also sited in the Park’s woodland area, The Salix.

The sound element of Hark, is based on field recordings made in Gunpowder Park, with some additional material from the Fisher’s Green area of the River Lee Country Park, within the Lee Valley Park. The sounds have been recorded over the last few years, capturing where possible the often elusive audio traces of the park’s wildlife and seasonal changes in the landscape. These include the sounds of the watercourses, sub-aquatic insects, echolocation sounds of bats, bird wing-beats, the intimacy of swans breathing, the movements of foliage, and the acoustic effects of the weather. These sounds were digitally recorded and processed and arranged into a series of compositions, utilising 5:1 surround sound technology. The sound material has been gathered via a range of recording technology such as hydrophones, ultrasonic recorders, binaural microphones, alongside more standard equipment, to explore the extended audio sensorium provided by digital recording, processing and reproduction technologies. Many of the sounds used are primarily ‘as recorded’, although others have been digitally processed through granular synthesis and a range of other effects software. However, it was intended that some sense of the unique quality of the original sound source should remain, often revealing new facets through these manipulations.

Part of the installation in 'The Salix' woodland

The relationship between the images and the compositions explore both subjective relations between the two elements and the use of the images as a form of ‘graphic score’. The graphic score has been a significant feature of the post-war musical avant-garde, most notably perhaps in the work of John Cage. The graphic score helped to facilitate a new, more open, less determined relationship between composer, performer and text. The graphic score also functioned as a representation of sound material beyond the standard repertoire of musical sounds. My interaction with the images as ‘score’, involved a personal response to the textures, tones and forms within the original image and the subsequent transformations and animation. The images acted as both a subjective trigger and as a structuring device, providing a concrete, if flexible, point of reference for the collaboration.

Part of this project was to consider ways to engage creatively with the natural environment and bio-diversity of the green space without reducing it to a comfortable ruralism or a straightforward documentary record. We wanted to represent the often strange and disconcerting sound manifestations of the totality of this environment. Gunpowder Park, as much of the Lee Valley, is a bio-diverse green space but intersected by urban development and transport infrastructure. I n spite of its complex natural habitat the ubiquitous background sounds of the M25 and the flight paths of several airports are a strong audio feature of the site. Whereas the brain can filter out these consistent background noises to a certain extent they are all too apparent when recorded. Although much effort was made, via technology or technique to isolate specific sounds, some of these ‘lo-fi’ sounds were also processed and deliberately used, or seeped in as background colour to the other recordings. Arguably this added an unsettling edge to the pieces and was therefore more representative of the totality of the audio environment.

Arial View of Gunpowder Park
Photo: David Tothill

If Hark had its own formal aims and parameters there is also a direct relationship, both contextually and in the work itself, to wider issues of ecological diversity and sustainability. In many respects there is a direct correlation between the wider ecology and the ‘acoustic ecology’ of an area. A diverse natural environment and a sensitively designed built environment will by definition tend to be richer in terms of its soundscape. The work hopefully makes apparent the richness of this environment through the forensic detail of the images and the diversity and particular qualities of the sounds. It also represents the results and benefits of a durational observation of a site such as Gunpowder Park. This is very much a work in progress, and we will continue observing and working with the seasonal and longer-term processes of growth and maturation of this newly opened green space, set on the border between the urban and the rural.

David Chapman is a multimedia practitioner, teacher and researcher

HARK is funded by Arts Council England and Lee Valley Regional Park Authority

For further information on Gunpowder Park go to www.gunpowderpark.org.

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