Lucy Stevens' audio and visual art projects

Embrace Arts fire route

22 July 2012

The fire route isn’t usually something that I stop to take a closer look at when I’m at work, but as I was ‘walking’ the route for an evening event, I noticed how peaceful the space was. With hidden sculptures covered by wisteria, the sun was shining and the birds singing, it was a welcome haven away from the hustle and bustle of queues of jazz fans inside. So, I came back for the next two days and took sound recordings from the trees, plants, drain, window, birds, a wasp being attacked by red ants and my favourite- the tap.

I used contact microphones wrapped around trees, plants and taped onto objects, including the tap. Hydrophones (under water microphones) were used to dunk into the drain, puddles and buried in rain-soaked mud. The recordings from the trees and plants haven’t been included this time as they were very quiet and almost inaudible because there was no wind to make the plant sway.

Below are three recordings recordings- one of the wasp being attacked by a group of red ants- the sound of the wasps wings brushing against the contact microphone can be heard, plus some gentle scrapes which are actually the ants dragging the wasp by its legs.

The other two recordings are taken from the tap. One recording is using a contact microphone taped to the top of the tap, to capture the sound of the water being slowly released and passing through the tap. The other is a recording of a hydrophone placed under the tap to capture the sound of falling water.