Pale Blue Dot Collectives’ sound piece Beneath the Moon’s Gaze has been selected for Arts Territory Exchange’s Sound Library.
MUCK (Must Use Critical Knowledge) and aTE have collaborated to bring together a number of textual prompts to instigate questions around the possibility of the Earth’s recovery, the inevitability of mans’ eventual demise, connectivity, hope and isolation. Artists from around the world were invited to provide accompanying sound works reflecting on their own territories, the fantasy of other places and the excitements and restrictions of proximity and distance, prior to and beyond time of Covid 19.
Follow the link on this page here to listen to our piece and the other selected works.
Beneath the Moon’s Gaze
Made in collaboration with John Hooper under our collective title, Pale Blue Dot Collective.
The geology of the Lake District has changed monumentally over the past 500 million years. The southern third of the Lake District is made up of rocks such as slate, siltstone and sandstone, which were formed at the bottom of tropical seas ~420 million years ago. The landscape of the Lake District has gone through periods of being dominated by volcanic activity, limestone, sandstones and the Ice Ages.
The abundance of nature in Grizedale Forest led me to think about the formation of life on Earth, which some scientists believe happened within tidal areas 4 billion years ago. At this time, the moon orbited much closer to Earth than it does now which caused huge tides to ebb and flow every few hours.
These tides caused variations in the salinity in coastal areas which may have driven the evolution of early DNA biomolecules. The sounds of the tide, captured on the current British coastline, were recorded in response to my stay in Grizedale. The recording has been slowed down to correspond to the time before Grizedale existed and the area which was to become the Lake District, was under tropical sea.
Bringing the sound of the sea back to Grizedale is an attempt to bring a cosmic perspective to viewing the landscape. Through the ever increasing loss of starlight and dark skies, we are losing our relationship with the universe, and forgetting our place within it. This piece is an attempt to bring focus to the long evolutionary journey of all the local flora and fauna, and the cosmic importance of each strand of life that exists on Earth, in contrast to the darkness of space.