The Containment of Sound Within Negative Spaces

After spending the month of July at Porthmeor Studios for my residency studying sound in greater depth, my interest in sound as a medium has developed alongside my interest in landscape, and as a result the two areas have come to intertwine. I developed an interest in negative space and the containment that these spaces evoke in the landscape, as well as the altered acoustics and sonic qualities found within voidal landscapes, such as caves and quarries.

Though my work is primarily an investigation into the translation of something intangible into something tangible, extrapolating this idea out to apply to the Cornish landscape, it could also be a social and cultural investigation in its focus on the quarry as a specific type of landscape. I am studying a typically post-industrial landscape in an area of the UK which has suffered as a result of this industrial decline, after being such a hub for it in years past. The dormant, voidal quarry space is a visual and physical indication of the gradual eradication of much of the mining and quarrying industries, left dotted across Cornwall and the peripheries of the UK.

Above: Exploring the relief and textures of rock carved (eroded) by the waves at low tide.

Above: Walking the line between sculpture and drawing - carving a drawing inspired by sound waves into a small rock.

I began by exploring making my own small scale negative spaces, using found clay to build up a ‘cave space’, experimenting with the acoustics of it – playing audio material inside the small bowl-like form and placing it over my ear in a similar way to what I did with my headphone maquette a few months ago. Making my own sort of ‘scale model’ of the voidal landscape helped develop my interest in the matter contained within the excavated landscape – the sounds and energies of past activity in spaces such as dormant quarries.

I also started to explore the possibilities of stone as a material by carving into found rocks, like the one shown above, to create a tiny negative space sculpture, one that is barely even noticeable as a sculpture unless examined very closely.