Abstract

The Yorkshire Soundscape Project was conceived to retrace sounds of an audio archive featuring the Yorkshire Dales and focuses on recording and representation in the search for change in a relatively unthreatened environment. Within the framework of soundscape ecology and composition, through a lens of psychogeography, this is a practice-based case study of a sound artist’s experience of landscape through archive, composition, and geopolitics of the ‘natural’ environment.

The madness (or, arts practice) activated by revisiting and retracing within the eerie English countryside has allowed new perspectives on the practice of composition inspired by archived material. This has given rise to certain questions on the interpretation of the archive through the imagination, and its relevance in a world wired by environmental politics, all set within a pastoral and typically English landscape.

Keywords

Soundscape composition, acoustic ecology, soundscape ecology, Yorkshire dales, music, world soundscape project, archive, audio archive, psychogeography, national parks, geopolitics, nature, electroacoustic, ambisonic, stereo