Sound

Sound is becoming increasingly a part of my exploration.    The contrast between birdsong and the wind (as if on cue - a huge gust of wind has erupted!  The wind and rains recently have been quite furious, even hail falling yesterday.  The wind dogs have been driving the dog demented!).  

The sound of rain as I film.  The poetry of falling rain as I concentrate on a small detail.

The atmosphere changes from what I experience when I am recording and what the microphone has heard when the film is being played back. Sound has always been important to me at my installations and at the exhibitions held afterwards that document them.  Movement creates the need for noise?

Lines

Watching sheep making their way through the fields using  tracks that they have created again and again.  Sheep lines.

Tree grain in a stump.

Nettles and Fox

The track I walk up onto the hill has become almost impassable.  The nettles have shot up over the last week.  The trail through I have been creating has disappeared under all the growth and I carve through again trampling nettles, getting stung and wet in the rain.  The view has gone into drizzle and mist.

This idea of tracing a path through constant use, repetition, creating marks in the landscape.  The sheep trails visible in the grass.  Caterpillar tracks in the woods as machines clear felled trees.  The smell of fox through the undergrowth.

Sound

1st and 8th May 2009

VE day

A bracing day.  The wind has been howling through the trees.  Up on the hill it was magnificent, a sharp contrast to last week.   The rain blowing in your face whilst the sun sent strong bursts of light through the clouds.  

The first swifts of the season also appeared today, a month later than the swallows.

May day

I've been hoping for a sunny clear day to start this project.   Why, I'm not sure, maybe for the sheer sense of optimism of it all! And a bright day allows wonderful views across the valley when you can see cloud shadows moving across the hills opposite. The scale this gives, the size of the sky, is physical.  It is this that makes sense to me.  It's not the wonderful view per se it's the sensation of being in and part of this landscape.

This study over a summer is a record of my journey of making sense of this landscape and mapping it on many different levels.  It is also a time of experimentation.  I hope to use film as part of this project, but I'm not sure how just yet.  

I will start by using a simple note book approach, taking still images from the same location over the duration of the summer to chart the passing of time. I also hope to create larger works in the landscape.  To record hidden elements, to capture a fleeting moment - perhaps!