Cloddfa (Quarry) generating liminal experience of place through the use of sound-led recording and editing techniques in audio/visual installation

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This project is a collaborative practice-led research project by AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellow Dr Ruth Jones based at The University of West England and sound researcher/filmmaker Andrea Williams based at The University of Wales, Institute, Cardiff. Jones's research has emphasised the multi-layered nature of place and identity and has focused on drawing audiences into an experience of the in-between or liminal nature of place in relation to memory and identity through film installation and public art practice, while Williams has focused on exploring sound-led film, in which the assumed dominance of image over sound in film and installation is called into question. The collaboration between these two practitioners provides an opportunity to bring together these two concerns to ask how sound-led film techniques could be employed in an audio-visual installation environment to generate a heightened awareness and meaningful experience of liminal places for viewers.In order to address the relationships between place and sound/vision, the research will focus on two particular places, the disused Porthgain granite quarry and Abereiddy slate quarry situated within half a mile of each other in the same locale in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. These sites could be considered as liminal places, located between their historical industrial use, of which traces remain and their present use as sites of leisure, and/or curiosity. In addition their physical and acoustic resemblance to outdoor auditoriums lends itself to exploring their potential for sound-led film. Working with cinematographer Phil Cowan, Jones and Williams will research the context for, and develop an audio-visual installation that evokes for viewers the simultaneous infusion in these landscapes of historical, cultural, geographical, memorial, aural and spatial resonances that cannot be encompassed in a classic linear narrative. It is through the representation of the multi-layered intersecting space of all these qualities of place that a liminal experience can occur and can have meaningful impacts for audiences.Drawing on Williams's research into rendered acoustic landscapes and Jones's place-orientated visual art practice, the researchers will experiment with applying 'surround-sound' techniques simultaneously with the intimacy of hyper sound systems that can target sound outputs so that a viewer is led towards 'localised' sounds within the installation space. The aim is to explore how a rendered 'sound-led' experience could function in an audio/visual installation environment. An assumed 'natural harmony' between sound and image does not necessarily generate a meaningful experience of place for the viewer in audio/visual installation. The researchers propose that in representation of landscape, a rendered soundscape can provide an experience for audiences that is more 'true' to the multidimensionality of place. Strategies to evoke a meaningful and liminal experience of the places include:1. Acoustic close-up's /voices projected as a localised sound space within the larger space of the gallery that is experienced when a body moves into the defined space, giving the viewer a somatic (bodily) and uniquely individual experience of sound in relation to place.2. Asynchronicity of sound and image - the acousmatic effect of sound whose source in vision is denied. For example, the viewer hears and experiences the sound of a dog barking at their heels, but they cannot see the source of the sound in the image projected.