Last night while cooking dinner, and listening to Mozart sonatas for piano and violin, (not so irrelevant perhaps, as it meant that I was not actively thinking about this coursework) I had some more thoughts about the book project for Assignment 2 and the slideshow experiment for this exercise. In particular there came to mind two books that I had not thought out before in connection with any of this work but that are in fact helpful to what I am doing now, Molitor (2015) and Stenger (2014).
Neither of these involve photography but they do have linked visual and audio elements. Claudia Molitor’s work, which can still be experienced on her website cited below, is an audio representation of a journey by train from London to Margate, the sounds, songs, music, and words, representing places along the way, accompanying a schematic, hand-drawn map of the journey. Susan Stenger’s work was an installation based around a geological cross-sectional map of the coast of Northumberland, from the mouth of the Tyne to the Tweed at Berwick, made in 1839 by Nicholas Wood, some 12.5 metres long. The map was accompanied by a soundtrack, mostly made up of fragments of folk tunes associated with places along the route, lasting about an hour. The idea was that you walked along the map, listening to the fragments at the relevant points along the way.
These two works set off an idea for developing the work I did for Assignment 2 as a possible alternative to the book. When I originally did that work, I did not think that a slideshow would work well, particularly with the limited set that will form the book. I also did not have a good grasp on creating a slideshow. Now that I have done a couple of experiments for this exercise, and having played around a bit more with Lightroom, which has proved easier than I thought, notwithstanding a couple of false starts, I think that something could be done. To work properly though it needs to be much more substantial and include many more of the shots that I took along the route. Indeed, I have for now settled on about 108, making a slideshow that lasts almost 12 minutes. In an ideal world I think it would be interesting to make the slideshow last as long as the journey itself, about 25 minutes, to make a much more immersive experience. I have posted this initial trial set on Vimeo.
Bearing in mind the work of Molitor and Stenger, what the slideshow needs is a soundtrack to accompany it. Realistically I do not think this is easily achievable now, for the purposes of this exercise, and would be quite a major project in its own right, not least if the whole piece was to last the equivalent time of the train trip. There are also issues with regard to licensing, and presumably royalties, for some of the music that would be useful in a project such as this. Nevertheless, here are some ideas for music and sounds that might work:
The start of Richard Rodney Bennett’s theme music for “Murder on the Orient Express”
Extracts from Arthur Honegger’s “Pacific 231”
The sound of migrating geese for the ponds at Merryshield
“Rocket Man” for Wylam where George Stephenson’s cottage is (an unforgivable but irresistible pun)
The sound of golfers for Ryton golf course
“Blaydon Races” (for Blaydon, obviously!)
The sound of cash registers from Pink Floyd’s “Money” (Dark Side of the Moon) for the Metro Centre
Iron foundry/heavy industrial noises for the Armstrong works at Scotswood
Pons Aelius “Fire under the Bridge”
Lindisfarne “Fog on the Tyne”
I am sure there are plenty of other sounds and tunes that could also be incorporated, particularly folk tunes that have specific local connections, but it is going to take quite a lot more work to identify them and bring them together. For now, just let this be a mental exercise.
Molitor, C, (2015). Sonorama. Listening to the view from the train. Axminster: Uniformbooks
Stenger, S, (2014). Sound Strata of Coastal Northumberland. Newcastle: AV Festival
http://www.claudiamolitor.org/sonorama-1/
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 