Chapter 4
BETWEEN THE TURNS OF TIDE
8.1 channel sound installation, field recording and predictive data sonification. 24 min composition.
Granular shuffle relationship between data and effect parameters, using the ~scale function in Max/MSP
Interactive 8-Channel Spatial Mixer
Experience immersive sound through this virtual environment. Using real-time distance attenuation and stereo panning, this tool allows you to "walk" through a multi-channel installation of Between the Turns of Tide, manipulating volume and spatial depth with your cursor.
Drag the gold circle icon to move through the room: get close to one speaker to hear its unique track, between two to hear them in stereo, or stand in the centre to hear all 8 channels evenly mixed.
Click image to open interactive page in a new tab, or click here
The page may take a few minutes to load. Please listen with good headphones.
Where the tides draw in at the edge of the sea, you lose the shape of things.
Standing on the shore of the River Severn in southwest UK, the tessellated mudflats stretch some ninety metres to meet the water’s edge. My feet slowly sink into the miry ground below as I watch the water steadily advance, folding over itself and erasing the tessellations on the way into shore.
To remain here long enough is to sense that within the repetition of the tides lies insistent variation. There is no boundary here, only gradients, delays, and overlaps.
In the sound installation work Between the Turns of Tide, field recordings made along the 350-kilometre length of the River Severn are modulated by predictive tidal data for the year 2035. Both speculative and grounded, the piece reflects on the inevitability of tidal motion and on our shifting relationship with what is forecast, expected, or yet to come.
Cast in three sections, the work moves from the deep propulsion of underwater currents, through the resonances of beached ships at Purton, and into the wholly unforeseeable, catastrophic, and uncharted.
What is it to be held within the intertidal?
Not as a moment. Not as a place.
But as a duration,
drawn out, returning, never still.
From Artist statement
Between the Turns of Tide unfolds in the relationship between tidal field recordings and predictive tidal data of the River Severn, which are mapped across a wide array of DSP techniques across the 24-minute duration.
The granular shuffle effect is a feature of the first movement. This process shuffles microscopic audio 'grains' of tidal recordings to produce distinctive rhythmic stuttering patterns. By scaling these data to control specific effect parameters such as feedback, pitch transposition, and grain size, the work creates a direct modulatory link between predictive data and tidal movement relations. The result is a highly agitated patterning with flurries of activity that disappear as quickly as they emerge.
