I went again today to record the final field recordings to use within my prototype piece/pieces. I decided to explore earlier on in the day and continue to use my Geofon in other ways, as well as normal XY recording from the Zoom H5. On the way to the park at the dock, 5 minutes walk from it there was a rushing sound coming from underneath me through the drainage and I decided to record it as well. The tide was rushing out between the barriers. I recorded it with XY and Geofon.
I found the sounds through both physical air and contact to be of interest to me, historically this area used to be a huge shipping section of London until the early 1970s when it became a large housing project. It now faces gentrification and change, Notably, this area where I’m recording is the last section that remains or of. The dockyard is still almost original to this day. The idea that perhaps the waters have crashed amongst these docks over years without change makes my field recording almost a recontextualised aspect of today. The same sounds that previous humans in the past living in the early 1940s would have heard. Despite the noisy planes flying over London City Airport.
Continuing onwards there was a section of large reeds and small birds living on the peninsula above the waters. I find nature thriving in large urbanised areas to be of interest to me. Jez Riley French has a similar love for the microscopic sounds amongst cacophonous city soundscapes and this happened to be one of those.
After this, I finally arrived at the beginning of the park and ecological section. I recorded some loud bird songs and the changing soundscapes amongst them. Again I found the constant battle between noise pollution and nature to be inspiring, although we’ve destroyed and taken the landscape from animals such as these tiny birds, there’s always a will to survive in nature. The natural instinct to remain alive and thrive is supported and destroyed by humans all at the same time. Conflicting. It’s interesting how all of my field recordings within this area can be used as evidence of this, as well as a way of understanding this area through its soundscapes that I’ve recorded.
I also spent some time attaching my Geofon to non-human objects in interest to see if they resonated as much as the other objects I attached my Geofon to, I’ve found that the sounds were a lot different. I found the resonating frequencies were less high-pitched and metallic sounding. To know that noise pollution still resonates within logs and dirt, one could ask how this affects the wildlife within it?
I listened to a few more areas of interest and found different resonating frequencies and sounds within the objects that absorbed the noise pollution and how it interacted with it, based off of my recordings one could make the assumption that a lot of the wildlife is being affected by the noise pollution.
I then carried on to the previous area where I was recording the first trip within here and explored different sections of the park that I had perhaps missed. I recorded the same turbine again which unfortunately wasn’t moving once again. A shame as I feel this is an important part of this ecological park and I wanted to see if it made any noise through contact or XY air vibrations.
The last aspect which brought my interest to me was the tall skyscrapers across the river in Canary Wharf. I did a research audio paper on noise pollution and the role a sound artist could have in combatting it. I remember finding out the damage that tall skyscrapers bring towards the city’s soundscape reflecting sound in large amounts. Seeing as the London City Airport is right near it, I’m not surprised by the amount of noise pollution that reflects from it, some of these planes during my recording were so loud they sounded thunderous.
You can see Canary Wharf to the east in this first photo and the City of London to the west. Two large sections of skyscrapers covered in glass reflective sound material.
The next step is to take all my field recordings and edit and chop them into a file of field recordings I can use. I think my final piece will be a performance with tape loops, synths and field recordings. Improvise 5, 5-minute pieces and put them together. A sonification/reflection of this area into a music concrete/ambient/minimalist piece of work. After cataloguing my sounds and editing them I will make a new tape loop as the last few were a bit amateurish and didn’t actually sound nice to my taste for this project.