Around the wind

Beàrnaraigh

one day in June 
	twenty-four hours 
		twenty-four episodes 

twelve hours 
	of the island 
		Beàrnaraigh alone 

twelve hours 
	around the island 
		walking my clockwise trace 
		 
Wind and movement 
	land and sea
		time and distance

Listen 
	to an hour 	
		hear across 20 days 

Listen 
	to a mile 	
		hear across 76

Beàrnaraigh - a day in 24 episodes

4 Reels for Fair Isle

outer northeast 7 minutes
The Drive Moor Crescent Moor Road South Rectory Road 
A chill wind gusts 		in the early dawn 		gulls cry above the street
A street-front hedge 	dark green dotted with red 	a gatepost rots

Day 81 Friday March 26th

inner west 2 minutes
The Poplars High Street Graham Park Road Elmfield Approach
Along the ginnel 	ivy winds through a wall-top fence 	a wren sings 
Wall top moss 	red brown and green strokes 	painted on mortar lime 
Pitted surfaces of the wall’s stone	signature	 	of the masons pick

Day 82 Saturday March 27th

outer northwest 1 minutes
The Drive Westfield Drive Parker Avenue Elgy Road Elmfield Road Oakfield Terrace 
Across from a terrace of cottages 	blue builders bags of stones 	and a stack of tiles 
Stepped back from the road 	back from the wind 	an olive tree sways

Day 83 Sunday March 28th

This was a collaborative group walking project organised by Kel Portman of Groundworks. Given the similarities in the underlying idea with the series of Reels and Rants that I have already done I chose to draw on those experiences in how I responded. I used the same ‘place’ that I had walked during my last set of Rants and would thus add another chapter of my walking on an imaginary island.

Landlinks: in the south of an imaginary island

Landlinks: in the south of an imaginary island [spoken word version]

This work highlights the ecological issue of the covid pandemic and raises questions of the embodied act of walking and the nature of borders both real and imaginary. In response to the three periods of “stay home” restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic I walked into existence an imaginary island. For the first lockdown I walked from my house, for 20 minutes in any and all directions; I mapped my route and recorded my walking (sound, poetry and line). My walking makes Contención Island; I walk until easing begins – 42 days. In the second lockdown I walk the shoreline of the island and, in so doing, to also mark the days of lockdown. With a compass in the middle of the island, I measured 28 equal angles and, where each cuts the island rim produces 28 stretches of coastline – all of different lengths. I walk one each day and, over 28 days, build a walk around the entire island; the order in which I walk the sections is determined by chance – building an island across time. In the third lockdown I walked to places selected using chance operations and record their sounds for randomly determined periods of time.
The presentation will discuss the question of the creation of an island in the middle of a city, the symbolism of ‘the island’ in my walking practice and how this related to ongoing issues of the Anthropocene. I will also discuss my use of walking as an act of response to the physical and political constraints of the pandemic.
The work that this audio paper is based on is available to listen to in full at
Contención Island
For lockdown 3 there is also an audio map on radio aporee https://aporee.org/maps/projects/soundsofcontencionisland

Walking Contencion Island [audio paper]

In celebration of the ancient Roman god Terminus, god of boundaries, whose festival is 23rd February ... I walked the shoreline of my imaginary lockdown island - Contención Island (https://martinpeccles.com/other-sound-works/contencion-island/). Although I've waked this in sections before, I have never previously walked it in one go.
So, starting at about 05:50 I walked through the dawn and ended at 10:00 - four hours - the length of the shoreline was about 11 miles and the walk total was about 12 once I add in the distance from my house to the shore. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much of a dawn chorus along the shoreline in February ... and it was quite windy ... force 4 to 5 gusting 6 to 7.

Terminalia: around Contención Island

My Practice Final

In response to “stay home” restrictions in the Covid-19 pandemic I walked into existence an imaginary island. For the first lockdown I walked from my house; I recorded my walking and mapped my route; I make Contención Island; I walk until easing begins – 42 days. In the second lockdown I walk the shoreline - 28 stretches of coastline; different lengths; I walk one each day; over 28 days I re-build an island across time. In the third lockdown I walked to places using chance operations and record sounds for randomly determined periods of time - 83 sounds of randomness.

Eccles Walking Contencion Island (Radiophrenia version)

A place. Bounded by the Bering Sea and mountains; land lived on and from for generations. Walk, stand, look at, over and across the land; scrub, hill, marsh, river, sea, town, gold. In this composition of field recordings and poetry, through seven replicated walks I explore embodied time, distance and movement across this place. Each day re-sets the image of this place; a new walk, a fresh exploration, an open path - the same place. Each replication is walked once; sequential sections of seven walks; seven consecutive days - seven days in June - one place in seven movements.

7 Days In June

Having, through previous works, created the imagined island of Alnay, I walk its shoreline starting at dawn on the summer solstice June 2021; the work plays from 24h before the winter solstice to 24h afterwards. The work has two dimensions - my reading of my poetry of the walk and the recording of the walk. The poetry plays through a single speaker and the walking plays through the quadrophonic array, reflecting the microphone orientation as I walked.

Alnay

Based on seven walks in Alaska. The text and images (formatted as a concertina fold book) that accompany the sounds can be viewed here -

seven days in June

Four Reels for Fair Isle (after John Cage) is a 28-minute work re-imagining Cage’s 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs. The work reflects movement, time and distance in the landscape of the remote Scottish island of Fair Isle. With the 4/4 time signature of the Reel it is a composition of 4 sets of 4 field recordings, the location and duration of which were determined by chance. 
This is the third step of the first Reel.

Four Reels for Fair Isle - Reel 1 Step 3

Based on the same idea as the other Reels (https://mpefairislereels.wordpress.com) these are the version with accompanying spoken words - somewhere between stream of consciousness and poetry they place me within the landscape that I was walking.

Reel 4

Reel 3

Reel 2

Reel 1

days heard through broken windows of an outhouse of an old croft 
two walks on the island edge 
nine recordings 
seven days 
twenty-five miles
10h 27m
in Orcadia

Around The Wind [part 1 - 08:12 to 13:19]

Around The Wind [part 2 - 13:19 to 18:26]

Búðahraun examines distance, time, movement and place from replicated walks into the remote, coastal, Icelandic lava field of Búðahraun. A ‘there-and-back’ route was walked twice, once at dawn and once at dusk; distance is both the distance of the walk and distance heard across the lava field. As well as the elapsed time of the walks themselves, time is present as the time of day but also the time between the walks – the time of a day – and, as the walks occurred on the summer solstice, the time of the year. Movement comes directly from my footfall, my embodied movement across the rock, but also from the comings and goings of the birds as they, and their calls, songs, and displays move over the lava field. Together these elements contribute to a sonic portrait of a place but they also create a space to allow a listener to hear a place of their own.
An accompanying haibun is at: 
https://martinpeccles.com/2019/02/05/budahraun/
This recording appeared as the second episode of Flux on Resonance Extra (https://extra.resonance.fm/series/flux).

Búðahraun

one day in June 
	twenty-four hours 
		twenty-four episodes 

twelve hours 
	of the island 
		Beàrnaraigh alone 

twelve hours 
	around the island 
		walking my clockwise trace 
		 
wind and movement 
	land and sea
		time and distance

listen 
	to an hour 	
		hear across 20 days 

listen 
	to a mile 	
		hear across 76

Beàrnaraigh #1 Midnight To 01AM

Bearnaraigh #2 01 To 02AM

Beàrnaraigh #3 02AM To 03AM

Beàrnaraigh #4 03AM To 04AM

Beàrnaraigh #5 04AM To 05AM

A Walk with Horns: “playing” the St John’s Harbour Symphony

begin to hear

4 walks 
  2 islands 
    1 bird 
      walk for 306 minutes 
        to cross 21 days 
          walk for 8 miles
            to listen across 2000



                        begin to hear


Walk 1, June 27th 06:01 to 07:49, 3.5 miles
48° 23' 31.6'' N, 53° 19' 33.2'' W

from the step 	grass gravel 	path 	road	gravel 	trodden earth 	 a wooden bridge 	 	walkway planks 	 a rock cleft 	stand on a cliff top above Skerwink Rocks turn 	the inland route 	overlook a lake	two blackpoll 	quad-bike-churned mud 	re-join the main trial 	pull up the hill 	cross grass 	to the step

snipe’s winnow held 
on the still air 
a crow calls to a robin’s song 

a chill June wind 
traces patterns on the water 
there are no chicks yet 

a humpback blows 
blows blows and dives 
nearby a minke whale 

at the “stars and stripes” house 
a white-throated sparrow 
snipe still calling 

 
Walk 2, July 17th 07:16 to 08:21, 1.5 miles
55° 28' 19.6'' N, 1° 35' 35.9'' W

a track between fields 	 two gates to the coast 	turn north 	pass the house 		above a bay 	a gate 	 a tunnel of hawthorn 	 drop down a gully to the shore 	approach the colony 	 sit below a headland turn 	 pick back 	across the rock field 		climb the gully to the footpath 	along the path 	pass the house 	through two gates 	

tread carefully on sharp-edged craters 
bubbles of volcanic gas 
aeons old 

to and fro and to 
and fro along the cliff face 
the kitts call out their name 

rock written with nest-white lines 
July chicks tuck in 
behind adult legs 

white-tailed bumblebee 
and meadow crane’s-bill 
a sun-soaked cliff path 


Walk 3, July 17th 08:37 to 09:50, 1.8 miles
55°29'28.0"N, 1°35'45.5"W

through the gate 	a dune-top path by a golf course tall grass 	 bracken 	dog-walkers 	two crumbling pillboxes 	one runner   begin to hear the colony 	through the gate 	 the cliff-base path 	 the treacherous step across the black-boulder field to sit turn	cross the boulders	below the cliff 	along the dune top path	 drop onto the beach 	to the water’s edge 		back up the beach 	through the dunes through the gate 

youths primp golf course greens 
kitts loaf on boulders 
as offshore auks bathe 

soil-scrape nests 
tucked-in above white ledges 
scattered fulmars 

summer insects emerge 
to crawl the boulders 
rock pipit bounces through 

sweeping the fairway 
the leaf blower’s blast drowns 
the whitethroat’s song 


Walk 4, July 17th 11:00 to 11:50, 1.24 miles
54°58'07.4"N, 1°36'23.0"W

car park	metal steps 	west  under the bridge and the first kittiwakes 	 cross the swing bridge 	onto the north bank 	 east 	to the north tower 	turn 	onto the quayside 	east 	past beach and deckchairs 	the footbridge	on the south bank 	east below the old flour mill 	round the end of the old flour mill	 west 	 metal steps up 	as the footbridge closes	to the car park 

rounding the corner 
I flush a great black-back 
from its dead-chick-brunch 

impossibly perched 
kitts line the underside 
of the bridge-bed girders

‘M’ winged fledglings 
drift back and forth 
above the falling tide 

seabird colony splash and smell 
absorbed in chat 
nobody looks up

begin to hear [haibun]

06:26 - 07:11, wind NNE 2 gusting 3, temp 6C (feels like 4) 
to the north haven. a suggestion of mist. another roadside cherry looks sick. the mayflower appears in april. snatches of blackcap below the great-tits rock. passed by the rhythm of the jogger. heads angled aside three blackbirds and a song thrush hunt. a pigeon feeds beneath the bird scarer. through a brick gorge into a building canyon. pls nocke if answr requid. a metal fish swims on a garden bench. a recessed boot-scraper by each front door. through the blast of the bin-wagon. two passengers on the double-decker bus. the mapped route is slightly cerne abbas-esque.

Thursday 23rd April

Thursday November 5th, 09:48 - 09:52 
64.3 degrees to 77.1 degrees
Wind W 3(gusting 4), T 10C (feels like 8C), 62% cloud cover

Crossing the street
a great tit’s bounce-flight. 
Holly bush’s red berries.

A walk round Contención Island Day 1 Thursday November 5th

southwest outer 12 minutes
The Drive Moor Crescent High Street Grandstand Road
Joggers stepping off into the road to avoid passing close 
Very wet underfoot 
A mixed flock of gulls 	a low flying flock of geese 	presumably Canadas 
A flock of redwing in roadside trees as I return

Day 24 Thursday January 28th

My practice aims to reflect the experience of my presence in and walking through natural environments.  I use a range of methods (predominantly sound and text) to respond to time, distance and place in the landscape.

Martin P Eccles

Pinned to spotlight

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