I found this project after researching her interview with Jez Riley French, this particular project resonated with me highly and I think this is a huge influence for my project.
Can place be investigated through sound?
Do past lives and past events leave sonic traces and how can we hear them in the present?
Using field recordings, interviews and archive materials ‘The Hebrides Suite: mapping the islands in sound’ explores aspects of island life past and present through the medium of composed sound.
I think perhaps I should incorporate interviews within my work, I remember that Mark considered this when I was presenting my work, and he felt like it was an important part of it. But this idea of a place being investigated through the medium of sound presents interesting questions, what are the benefits?
Sound, like memory, can be fleeting and ephemeral no sooner than is it heard it has gone. Recording offers the opportunity to materialise sound and make it suitable for analysis, study and creative use and re-use. But who decides what or who gets recorded or what or who gets remembered?
Recordings both make and are memories – ghostly traces of the past remaining in time and space. These traces of the past echo and reverberate through language, place-names, family stories, song and the sounds of the natural world to form a sonic background to the present.
Again this idea of ghosts within soundscapes and field recording keeps appearing, it seems like I’m chasing ghosts of soundscapes. It’s a great point that recording materialises sound and makes it usable for creativity and research, what happens when it is used as a defining action. Recording is saving ghosts, it’s a memory of time and space.
The Hebrides Suite: Mapping the Islands in Sound consists of three eight channel sound works and a large wall piece which maps the Uists according to field recordings made, and places mentioned, in the interview and archive materials used in the compositions.
‘Sandy Jaffas’ (2015) one of the three sound pieces, was commissioned this for this exhibition and made in collaboration with the S2 Gaelic class from Sgoil Lionacleit in Benbecula, members of the Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath (North Uist Historical Society) and South Uist Historical Society and supported by Museum nan Eilean, London College of Communication and CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice).
So the rest of the project was collaborating with students about what they hate, like and should change. They went and field recorded and this ultimately became an 8-channel installation piece.