Photo -The Lizard

Geological Time and Stone Turntable R&D – 3

https://vimeo.com/1057128614 🎧

Deep Time Moving is a project based on the Lizard in Cornwall. Lizard Point – 49.9593° N, 5.2065° W. The research residency, July 2023, and resulting outcomes responds to the landscape with 3 dancers sound and the movement.  A 4day residency based on the Lizard took place for research and development work leading to sold out 40minute public performances for at Epworth Hall, Helston, November 2023 and subsequent performances at Ashburton Art Centre.

Artist Kyra Norman the originator of the work, director and choreographer, was curios to explore movement in this landscape in human time, inspired by the multiple layers of movement in the landscape she was aware of.

 We looked and listened for different movements and their sound sources. I was struck by the very vast difference’s there were to find from high-speed radio waves and frenetic flies to the deep tectonic plate movement of the earth. These were contrasting extreme events in time.

The video above – filmed while developing work in the residency – 2023 – Director and choreographer Kyra Norman, film maker Eleanor Sikorski, sound composition Shirley Pegna, dancers Winona Guy, Talia Sealey, Caud Tonietto. 

Map from the coastal path

Recorded layers of sound and movement both close up and at a distance:

• the upper atmosphere with radio receiver – WR-3 VLF ‘whistler reciever’.
• the landscape with a Mix Pre-6, Sound Devices recorder with Sanken CS 3E shotgun stereo microphone and rode modular WX 4 windshield and mount -the windshield being vital for exterior recording.
• through rock with a geophone (similar to SM4).
• Through water and rock and wood with an Aquerian hydrophone and contact mic

My part was to record sound, mix and compose sound for the developing work in the studio and the performance. DancersTalia Sealey, Winona Guy and Claud Tonietto, producer Liz Howell and documenting film maker  Eleanor Sikorski  explored places, ideas, choreographies. The sound was made from field recordings and composed sound/music and mixed live for the performances. We were joined by designer Theo Clinkard who gave a feel of the outside wind and air in our inside performance space.

https://www.deeptimemoving.co.uk/about

Photo Steve Tanner

Here are just a few soundtracks and thoughts about this process

 I was surprised how busy the English Channel was with radio filling that space below the ionosphere, and Kyra Norman pointed out that the French radio seems to “bring the French coast even closer to us.”  Radio waves travelling at the speed of light: 300,000,000 (million) meters per second. The perception of the empty sea scape deceptive in terms of sound to be heard. With the aid of technology my human ears are ‘extended’ with these aids, and I could now hear the radio signals. Similarly, the geophone could pick up the lower frequencies of the ocean waves on the beach. Goonhilly station could bring me signals from out of the ionosphere from space and Heartland Point Observatory could bring me seismic data from earth activities reaching further ‘up’ and further ‘down’..

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/french-radio 🎧

The lizard’s scales

I imagine that the shape of the Lizard Peninsular as an animal in name and shape. This mass of land is imperceptibly moving as the earth evolves and the continents edge their way across the oceans. As the dancers explored what was their ‘present time’ improvising with newly presented field recordings, I was aware that under our feet or the boards of the village hall, was the historical outcome of the shifts of tectonic plates that abducted or pushed together 400 million years ago. Somehow the Lizard is a ‘separate animal’ from the rest of Cornwall. Dr. Beth Simons writes :

“The Lizard as an entirety represents a fragment of dominantly oceanic, with some continental, crust that have been thrust (or obducted) over younger sedimentary rocks. This obduction likely occurred by the Upper Devonian, with the closure of an ancient ocean.” https://variscancoast.co.uk/pentreath-beach  

Due to the pressures of the tectonic plates “the compressional forces of the Variscan orogeny,” the land area which is now the Lizard was formed of entirely different rock types and is unique to the Cornwall landmass.”

These movements, 400 million years ago, beyond my experience remain only in my imagination. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0jsg3l7/solar-system  

The movement below the Lizard under the village hall is of another calibre and of a larger slower system. Tapping into the lower frequencies of the ocean floor as the sea pounded on Gunwalloe beach was just a reminder of this larger scale of movement.

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/gunwalloe-beach-rollers 🎧

Photo Beth Simonds – @variscancoast Dollar Cove, Gunwallowe

For millions of years trees have been growing in partnership with rock and earth. Beth Simons caught sight of ancient trees that had been growing by rock and now preserved in the rock. Pictured above a type of conifer from the Devonian Age 380 million years old. Herre are recorded movements of some coastal trees with a light breeze blowing off the sea moving them – at the back of Poltesco beach with two pickup mics pressed close to the bark.

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/trees-on-poltesco  🎧

Close up tactile pebble sound clinking on Poltesco Beach picked up with a hydrophone and recordings of sound vibrating within the static large rock picked up with a geophone. I hoped the recordings could access for our ears the awkward internal spaces.

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/more-claustrophobic-rocks  🎧

In development when the piece might have been performed in the landscape outside, I was able to speak with Chris Watson, BBC sound recordist and artist, about how to deliver close-up sound to distant listening audience watching the piece on the cliffs. In the theatre inside space, translating the outside recordings to sonic experience for the audience in an inside space, we had a   5.1 surround sound system. Sound artist and technician Chris Fayers described to me how it was possible to move the focus of the sound, while mixing in real time, to the different areas of the theatre space. The encircling speakers would immerse the listeners allowing the sound to suggest a sense of movement, space and distance. 

Recording the coastal sounds close by and at a distance

https://soundcloud.com/shirley-896949324/flies-and-birds 🎧

I wondered how I could think about ‘time’ with these vastly different movements from sounds.There were tectonic plates moving slowly underfoot and the fast-flying insects I was recording on the coastal grasses.  Listening to a radio programme A Sense of Time, from Radio 4 programme in the All Scientifically series. Geoff Marsh commented, “What we know is that animals experience the world through their senses and different animals have different temporal resolutions rates at which they sample the outside world from one per second up to 400. This allows animals like birds to catch flies in flight and flies to dodge newspapers”.

Carlo Rovelli in his book The Order of Time comments on noticed perception, while Marsh comments that: “After speaking to experts about the perception of different life forms and by trying to get into the minds of different animals we unavoidably stray into the area of philosophy.”

In working on Deep Time Moving, the speed or movement of vibration/sound and the movement in the landscape of the dancers, flies or tectonic plates – et al – was brought into focus. Standing in the ‘present time’ was put into context with all the other elements around me on this geologically curious peninsular crouching lizard-like in the sea!

Photo Steve Tanner

This work has contributed to Geological Time and Stone Turntable R&D. Other parts of this R&D can be seen here on this website called The Groove, Sonic Rock Interactions, Skin and Ice and Flags on the Beach.

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