I started shooting for Assignment 6 back in October last year, with a view to recording seasonal and other changes, “transitions”, for a full year. That twelve months is now nearly up so I have started experimenting with possible presentations of the project. I have already discussed and agreed with my tutor that the slideshow approach is probably the best to adopt and so for now I am concentrating on that. I have also been thinking more about, and experimenting with, suitable soundtracks. A few things have become clear immediately.
In so far as one of my primary themes throughout this course has been the effect of humankind on the landscape, and in turn the effect of the landscape on people, what the final sequence needs to show is not just seasonal changes in the landscape but the passage of people through it over time, both on foot (with and without dogs), and in vehicles. I have written elsewhere before now a little of the history of the ford I have chosen for this project. The road follows the route of an ancient pack-horse trail that goes back at least until Medieval times, and quite probably still further back. Given the heavy Roman presence in the area, the proximity to the river Tyne, the transport of lead ore down from the local hills, active farming by the local Roman-British population, this is a route that could well have been in use for at least the last two millennia. Over time the track developed into a road, no doubt a rough one at first, at least partly paved later (there is an off-shoot bridleway nearby that goes back at least to the 17th century that still has remnants of early cobbles and stone setts), before in more recent times becoming metalled. The ford itself developed from a simple track through the water to the present-day concrete footbridge. Including pictures with people and cars in them serves to highlight the latest iteration of this continuing human impact on the landscape.
Something else that is clear is that the slideshow needs to be quite long to have the right impact – at the moment I anticipate sequences of something in the region of 175 images that will run for about 15 – 20 minutes (there are going to be two, one looking west, the other looking east). Anything shorter does not seem to work well.
This last point has implications for the soundtrack. What is obvious is that my idea of using an old Bobby Gentry song is not going to work as it is only about two and a half minutes long. I still do not want to use Vivaldi, but the Four Seasons concerto is in any event too long. Similarly, staying with the seasonal theme, Haydn’s “The Seasons” (which I was a bit surprised to discover when I checked my music collection I do not have) is even longer still, running to about two hours. By chance though, something I do have in my collection is a work by a contemporary Russian composer, Sergey Akhunov, which follows a similar structure to that used by Vivaldi, with one short movement for each season, that runs to about 20 minutes, which is just right. So far the sequence of images starts in Autumn while Akhunov’s sequence starts with Summer (in an early version, Spring in a later one) so I am going to have to adjust the running order of the photographs. Nevertheless, a quick run through yesterday suggests that the pairing should work: it is striking how, wholly coincidentally, some of the passages in the music seem to fit naturally with the images. I am not going to try otherwise to manipulate the order of the pictures to try to match the progression of the music, something well beyond my capabilities!
Using such a piece of contemporary music raises the possibility of being able to get permission to make the project public. Although I do not know Akhunov personally I have been supporting some of his work over the last few years (along with a fairly small band of others) which might give me enough on an intro. Certainly, contacting him would not be difficult. Possibly worth a try. The worst he can say is “no”, in which case the project will simply remain private and accessible only to my tutor.
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 