Hearing The Landscape: Natural Instruments.

I decided this week that I would experiment with the context of my work more thoroughly, in an attempt to convey some interesting concepts and ideas. I have been doing some sound/field and video recording in the Winter Gardens and wondered:

"Would I be able to play the landscape?"

I utilised Robert Rauschenberg's practice of collecting discarded materials to recycle into my work (saves me money!) and went back to my studio to record the sounds it produced. I treated a lot of the materials as percussion instruments, shaking them, poking and prodding to get as many unique sound textures as possible. I also created an instrument by placing pine cones into a discarded water bottle and shaking it, combining both natural and man-made objects.

I could experiment with this idea of creating instruments (Jasmina Cibic's most recent exhibition at Baltic comes to mind) using the landscape further by implementing the thick branches as a base and putting some guitar strings on them, or maybe I could create a picture that makes a sound.

Anyway, enough rambling, I had fun playing around with this concept and hopefully i'll find some use for these sounds i've recorded, i'll have to play around and see what soundscapes I can create using them.