News / Latest News / Aural Archaeological Project
Friday 1st September 2006
“Carrlands is designed as a small-scale case study in a region familiar to the principal investigator; it is the area in which he was born and raised. Lacking conventional scenic heritage and startling vistas, it is in an out-of-the-way area, far from the tourist trail. But it does provide a special opportunity to both study and explain the processes of landscape formation and the role of human agency; to problematise notions of landscape as purely visual construct; and to occasion a critical reappraisal of the inherent qualities of places rarely visited. Performance is conceived as a mechanism that precipitates and encourages visitation; that informs presence; and that illuminates places that do not easily reveal themselves.
Each performance is only available in mediated form, as individual soundworks: an integration of recorded texts from expert and popular sources and in a variety of registers, set within a specially generated musical matrix. The spoken texts derive from a variety of disciplinary and analytical approaches, juxtaposed with local observations and opinions and with the perceptions of the principal investigator, who is present as the lead voice, framing and contexting diverse material. Their uniqueness lies in the invitation to action.
The soundworks are disseminated and publicly distributed in the form of streamed; free-to-listen; pod-casts, initially available through specially designed, dedicated pages on the University of Wales , Aberystwyth website. Whilst the soundworks do exist as autonomous artworks, it is intended that they should be downloaded as MP3 files and taken to the location, where they offer a particular mediated engagement, and accessed through the personal equipment of the participant, Significantly, the participant is free to choose the time, season, weather, personal mood and social conditions; alone, in a group - under which the location is visited.”
http://www.landscape.ac.uk/smaller_grants/carrlands_project_details.htm