Lori has sent us an audio walk: The Deer, the Duck & the Raven. Usually her walks are intended to be walks, happening in the places for which the sound walks are made. That’s not possible at the moment, so she offers this in the spirit of imagination. Put your headphone on and just imagine you’re there…
Lori won’t be joining us as she confesses to being ‘a bit Zoom-phobic’. Perfectly reasonable stance! But she has told us:
The route of the walk takes participants through woodland to an iron age settlement above Newton Abbot, It is easily accessed from several housing estates in the immediate locality, so recently people have contacted me to say that it has provided them with a new way of appreciating the history, built environment and natural landscape on their own doorsteps. Other sound walks were in progress before the pandemic. I have made recordings, for example, of ambient sound in the local community garden, interviewed people who use this space about what it means to them, and also interviewed a descendant of a Victorian factory owner in Bradley lane, near the garden. This building is earmarked to be pulled down, threatening the industrial heritage of the area, and the community garden at its periphery, because an access road to a proposed housing development and ‘cultural precinct’ on this site will cut through them both.
Because of social distancing restrictions it is now no longer possible for me to complete the sound walk without help from other walkers who live near Bradley Lane. I intend to co-opt participants asking them to measure timings between key points not the route and to send me sound files of their own ambient recordings. I am also looking for a {soundproof) recording studio within walking or cycling distance from my home, to record a narration which will link bits of the sound walk together coherently. But if I can’t find one I guess I will just have to sit in a wardrobe, wrapped in a duvet as an improvised sound studio!
The image above is a detail from Settle No. 1, from a mono print series derived from the Deer, Duck and Raven project. It references Iron Age dwellings that were built where mid-century housing now stands.
artist website: www.loridiggle.com