Matilda Ross-Smith
listen & sea
listen & sea is a 15 minute audio experience which captures the unheard sounds of the deceptively busy world beneath the North Sea, close to an active port. On this journey you will be submerged into the depths of an unfamiliar environment with some acoustic surprises, before being returned to the surface to breathe again. Listen to the soundtrack using headphones to optimize the aural experience and take yourself into a dark room to reduce your other senses and highlight your hearing. Welcome below the North Sea!
Once you have listened to the audio (found below), scroll further down to read more about my thoughts behind the work.
Notes on the Audio
I like to think of listen & sea as being ‘U’ - shaped: a journey where the listener is submerged in the North Sea to hear unfamiliar noises before returning to the surface.
I wanted to give you the raw experience. When you listen to the work through headphones you are hearing the sounds just as I did when I recorded it. Apart from adding in the waves and seagull cries at the beginning and end of the audio (which I also recorded on site), I haven’t altered any of the sound heard in the piece.
Each listener’s interpretation will be different as most of us haven't heard underwater sounds through a hydrophone before. For example, one listener said the audio sounded like a construction site where another said it sounded like a pig! Among the different sounds there is an anchor being weighed and a container ship going past, but these abstract noises are hard to distinguish, which is exactly why I love them! We are curious and out of our depth (sic) hearing these strange sounds. Our lack of context and knowledge forces us to use our imagination.
The hydrophone recording level is as I heard it because I also wanted to demonstrate the sound pollution in our coastal waters. I was surprised not only by how many different and unusual noises I could hear, but also how loud and chaotic it was. This was in clear contrast to the environment above the surface. When I was recording it seemed so calm with the only sound being geese flying over. Living above the water, we are oblivious to the manmade sounds polluting our coastal waters. As soon as we are submerged with the aural perception of underwater creatures, we find it invasive and disorientating:- yet we are the ones creating this problem. The audio is supposed to be intense but produces a sense of relief (and ringing ears!) when you are returned to the surface.
Evolution of the Project
My work has changed tremendously since the start of this exhibition project a year ago. Originally, alongside other Artists I was putting on an exhibition for the community of Stonehaugh village on the edge of Kielder Forest in Northumberland, to celebrate their community and history with the Forest. I was going to create a sound walk for this event where loud speakers would be dotted along the route, magnifying the sounds surrounding Stonehaugh. The Art event was cancelled due to Covid-19, which was a great shame as we had met the locals and were looking forward to producing this event for them.
The project was relocated to Newcastle in the current academic year - specifically to the University campus. A change of location meant an adaptation of work for me, but I still wanted to work with sound. I thought about how I could use the urban surroundings to my advantage and brainstormed several ideas. These coalesced around how I could bring the sounds of nature to an urban space - for example playing the sound of a waterfall through hidden speakers near steps on the University campus. This might disorientate people as they walked up the steps against the sound of the flow of water. I also wanted to conceal the source of the audio so that the sound played tricks with pedestrians, as if they were imagining it. My aim was for people to experience a familiar venue and perceive it differently.
I was excited initially by the concept of abstract, natural sound combined with human activity. I was really trying to think of sounds that would contradict an urban space and seem unfamiliar to the ear. That is when I came up with the idea of recording underwater. I wasn’t familiar with hydrophones – microphones used to record underwater. When I did test recordings, the natural sounds I expected to hear were overlaid by man-made noise. My studio practice this year is focused on the behaviour of open water, so this idea ‘tide’ (sic) in perfectly with that. I chose to have the finished audio played in the Arches (in the heart of the Newcastle University campus). People pass through every day as these Arches form a passageway between the city and the University. There are four speakers permanently installed under the dark eaves and the space is sheltered, yet outdoors. I felt the constant stream of people walking under the Arches represented the flow of water under a bridge. The mysterious and unfamiliar sounds of an underwater world would fit perfectly in an area like this, causing passersby to stop, listen and wonder about these abstract noises and where they came from; a moment of pause and reflection in our busy lives.
Unfortunately, lockdown struck again. I was advised not to use the Arches space as my work would encourage people to stop, running the risk of gathering against health guidelines. I therefore decided to produce this work as an audio file for people to listen to at home. This has, I hope, advantages; it’s now accessible to a wider audience and brings the work to you. You will have listened to the sounds as I did, through headphones, and combining that with being in a dark room, you will get transported to the busy world underneath the North Sea.