This is a composition of field recordings taken at various wind turbine farms over the last year. They are recordings taken as part of a sound project
I’m working on which looks at infrastructure; a sonic exploration into the unseen mechanics which underpin our daily lives: Power, transport, sewer systems, communications and supply logistics.
The recordings presented here are in a fairly raw state and will be developed and augmented within the wider body of work. However, I think they hold different value in their 'solo' and raw form
- and may be of particular interest to listeners of TouchRadio. The modern wind turbine is an awe inspiring machine - gracefully benign from two miles away, yet from within their shadow they
assault an image of improbable violence on the senses. Designed to perform modern day alchemy through a screamed slicing of the troposphere, they detune the very skies which hang overhead and
broadcast infrasonic resonances into the ground which i was able to record through a geophone from over half a mile away. Within the setting of ‘nature', these machines are the very definition
of unnatural; up close, their rotating violations of nature's laws feel viscerally threatening.But then these locations too are, by necessity, raw and unforgiving environments. Bleak moorland
at raised altitude or wide unsheltered flatlands; horizon to horizon, exposed, desolate, dystopian. The wind howls across these plains, transforming the totally inert into the wildly volatile
at an instant; bracken, heather, gorse, singing fence wires dissecting arbitrary shingle boundaries for mile upon mile.</p>
The source material was recorded in multichannel spatial format using various ambisonic and stereo air mics, geophone and contact microphones matrixed to 5 channel surround.
Equipment:
Sonosax SX R4+
Ambeo / DPA 4060 / MK-416 / Telinga Mk2
JRF contact mics matrixed to 5ch / JRF prototype geophone
Thanks to Jez Riley French for the geophone loan, Rudi at Helix Branch and Emily Mary Barnett for her photography/patience.
