Cove Park, Rosneath Peninsula.
A week long mini-residency awarded by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. Feeling my way towards what might be next.
Day One. Knockings.
C O V E S O N O G R A M
*H U M M * C U C K O O * B R A Y * V R O O M *
*T R I L L D O W N * B U Z Z * V R O O M * H A R O O M *
*B A R K * B A A A * C H E E P * T R I L L M E S H * P E O W *
*C L U N K E R I N G * C R E A K * G U R G L E * *T R I L L G U A Z E *
* C H I R R U P L E * C H A T C H A T T E R * W H O O P * B E E P * C R U N C H *
Day Two: Rockings.
Notes
I bump into Barry and Bryony on the path towards the Barbour Road. Barry tells me the sheep’s wool I’m holding, gathered from rough grasses, is called knockings.
A pleasing sound-image: wool-knock.
Beachcombing and forest strolling.
Q: What travels faster, the sound of a boat’s engine or the waves caused by its wake? I presume the sound, but what are the different mechanisms behind this?
Surface waves vs body waves.
Idea for a sequence. The boats engine, or the bow wave… then the waves lapping with no sound… or the tolling of a bell in place of the wave sound. Any rhythmic sound. A pulse.
Idea for a shot. Go pro in ball on a stick. Revolves in the stream - water and air - like a water wheel? Caught in an eddy. Sounds of an eddy. What is that? Washing machine.
Sudden periods of no sound - stillness in sound terms - a way to show without the need for words, how sound is synonymous with both time and life…. Does gravity become relevant here (gravity = time…)?
Air - flows of insect wings. Mosquitos. Swimming in air.
Things falling- shot on glass. Animated butterfly made out of old book pages. Wing patterns? Mozzie? Then swimming - sculling underwater?
Camera body motion is the shot. Not what is seen but how the body moves. Camera as body.
Camera ball to float on water - the movement is what is seen-unseen. Not looking at but becoming. The event not the object.
Water leaks change weighting. Unpredictable positioning. Camera as gravity. Body as ground/grounding. Stones to balance. Ballast. (etymology bare-laden).
We cannot perceive gravity. We perceive the interaction between gravity and mass-full entities. Experientially, gravity is just part of the behaviour of things in relation to other things. Floating is the same.
Q: What happens if we bring the same logic to sound?
Flying/Swimming by feeling the air.
Navigating by electromagnetic fields/ by echo-location/ by GPS.
The sound of EM radiation.
Day Three: Flockings
Flying as (fast) swimming in air. Time and density.
Videos from: Bode-Oke, Ayodeji T. and Dong, Haibo (2020) Supplemental Video 1 & 4 from “The reverse flight of a monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is characterized by a weight-supporting upstroke and postural changes”, The Royal Society, [online] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2020.0268 (Accessed 4 May 2023).
Bats? Night flyers videoed in slow motion Cove Park May 2023, night.
Day Four: Unlockings
Idea for a short story.
Howl: A misheard biography in 24 fragments. Based on an archive researcher’s notes and transcriptions from incomplete and damaged vocal memos.
“To get the funding for this research I said I was going to uncover the truth about Shel, the long-forgotten “mother of acoustic architecture”. But in reality I don’t believe in truth. Well, not an objective truth anyway, of the sort that can be observed, from a distance, with cold scientific detachment. I don’t even believe in observation. Only listening. And listening is as much a creative act as anything can be.
My real reason for doing this is that my present has recently become unbearable. Burying myself in someone else’s past just seems like a better option for everyone.”
A close up of a stylus recording onto a wax cyclinder. Image: Brady Haran.
Day 5: Undockings
At the edge of Loch Long, testing the camera ball.
Technical Notes
GoPro Hero8 inside 20cm diameter polysterene sculptor’s mould in two halves, custom weighted with stones and sealed with gaffer tape.
The placement of the camera lens in relation to the water surface varied due to water ingress into the ball at the lens aperture, leading to different compositions. This could be easily avoided due to better sealing, but I chose not to in order to explore the image possibilities created.
Ballast stones used to counterweigh camera were placed in the centre of the hemisphere and evenly around seal. Moving them to one side of the rim instead should allow for landscape orientation if desired.
The 9:16 portrait format was a happy accident. ideal for emphasising depth over breadth and at times encompassing the two media - water and air alongside the extended surface membrane that appears here as a mirror of the loch bottom. When lighter in the water, the lens position allowed a glimpse above the surface too - following its own accidental rule of thirds. This worked best when there was action above the surface to capture (like my string pulling). Might work better on a day with a more interesting sky. Today was full white cloud.
GoPro Hero 8 footage ranges from cinematic (4K wide), standard, slomo and activity (narrow) view. Activity achieved the most interesting close up point of view, more of a sense of immersion. More tactile. More like the body of a fish.
Main limitations on experimentation were the frustrating unpredictability of connection between GoPro and mobile, via the Quik app. Connection was frequently lost, meaning the apparatus had to be disassembled, wasting time and gaffer tape and interrupting work flow.
Sound from within the loch is not as clear as it would be with a naked GoPro. Much scuffling can be heard when I pulled or pushed the ball using walking pole and string. Some interesting pops and bubbles are create as the water enters at the camera lens, and bubbles of displace air escape. The effect of these rising bubbles can also be seen distorting the curve of the air/water membrane.
Notes
I have time. Scrolling back through voice memos I find these strange notes recorded in the bath in February 2022. I remember I was thinking about what it would feel like to be a mosquito in the forest. it was during the period I spent researching with snow scientists. My motto at this time was ‘follow the noise’.
The Mosquitos: An imagined phenomenology of flight.
There is a cold pressure and a glint beneath her barbs and petals.
I tense my shoulders and a noise fills our body.
It skulls through the fluid.
We cannot think fast. Our temperature is low.
When we were eggs it was so cold, we could only think about the egg.
My shoulders are wings. They inhale vibration.
They pull on the fluid that cloaks us and I swim to my thought.
The thought grows and grows and grows until tree becomes leaf.