Sounds of the Wetlands
As part of a collaboration between the Universidad Austral, Valdivia, Chile, and the University of Arts London, a trip to the WWT London Wetlands Centre was organised by lecturer and programme director, Adam Stanovic. All students and staff who partook were required to take a number of field recordings, creating an archive from which they were able to draw from, in order to create individual, original compositions of the wetlands. This was based on the Universidad Austral’s SoundLapse project, where a five-minute recording was made, every hour for 365 days, at five different locations throughout the wetlands around Valdivia: https://soundlapse.net/. Members were then given the opportunity to publish their productions on German record label for field recording, soundscapes and sound art, Gruenrekorder, compiling all works into a comprehensive album. Within the scope of this project I created a 4 minute soundscape composition, titled ‘Black Sun’, utilising both instrumentation and field recordings taken at the WWT London Wetland Centre.
Black Marsh Sun
“The mechanical thrum of planes overhead the London Wetland Centre pulls an all encompassing veil of sound over its avian inhabitants. Every trill, tweet, and warble is accompanied by the prolonged roars, and almost perpetual rumble of noise pollution. Though these reservoir-transformed wetlands symbolise human solidarity against capitalist destruction, a tension remains palpable. Sitting in the hide, looking out over its manufactured vastness, the sonic landscape tells a different story. Plane tones collide, and compound, cutting through the surface of the water, reverberating into the recesses of its aquatic ecosystems; a sonic eclipse. In this mythopoetic retelling we imagine a world slowly submerged in darkness. Birds fly blind. Fish swim deaf. The layered drones of passing planes build amidst dense orchestration, masking presence and erasing nuance. The wetlands become a stage for the collective shadow of humanity, and invites the listener to ponder on the shadows they too cast.”