Welcome to Britain, thousands of years ago. Walk through our ancient woods, our rivers and wetlands, our open meadows and dense forests, all thick with the sounds of nature. Hear the calls and movements of animals that roamed this landscape.

Every sound you hear was created using recordings taken at Wildwood Trust, a centre for the conservation of British wildlife that features both past and present species. Twenty-seven of these species appear in Our Ancient Woods:


Arctic Fox · Barn Owl · Boar · Common Crane · Eagle Owl · Eurasian Elk · Eurasian Lynx · Eurasian Otter · European Bison · European Brown Bear · European Polecat · European Wildcat · Fallow Deer · Grey Wolf · Konik Horse · Little Owl · Pine Marten · Raven · Red Deer · Red Fox · Red Squirrel · Red-Billed Chough · Reindeer · Rook · Soay Sheep · Tawny Owl · White Stork

Our Ancient Woods

“We’ve got to learn how to live with things again – it’s not just our earth, our land… we’ve got to give them some space back, really.”

Every sound you hear was created using recordings taken at Wildwood Trust, a centre for the conservation of British wildlife that features both past and present species.

Keystone

The Pollinator Pavilion was a walk-in sculpture created for the Skipton Big Ideas Exhibition by ArtHouse Jersey. This is a binaural version of a four-channel sound installation.

The soundtrack was created using field recordings of Jersey honeybees at Samares Manor. Most of the recordings were taken by placing a microphone inside a bee hive and leaving it alone for an hour. Every sound you hear was created using the sounds of bees.

The work plays homage to the vital pollinator of all our food crops, the honeybee, which pollinates thousands of flowers on its nectar-collecting journeys. To produce just one gram of wax, a honeybee needs to consume eight grams of honey, making wax a precious resource.

The energy-conscious honeybee is a master of ecological design. The Pollinator Pavilion takes its inspiration from the cell structures in which bees nest and store honey A hexagonal grid or honeycomb is the best way to divide a 2D surface into regions of equal area with the least total perimeter.

The installation is constructed from concentric hexagonal layers of cardboard tubes which rise steeply, echoing the church organ pipes which it sits in front of. Sculpture by Natasha Dettman and Nissen Richards Studio, built by Jim Oxenham.

Pollinator Pavilion

‘Most of them don’t understand why you spent so much money on animals and just beside you have very poor people… so you have to explain why, that the ultimate goal is for people, for the wellbeing of people…’

Fiovan’ny ala (change of the forest) is a sonic exploration of two locations in Madagascar, Ankarafantsika National Park and Lake Alaotra, and the conservation work being undertaken there. All the sounds originate from fieldwork done in these two locations in September 2022 or from recordings of captive lemurs taken at Jersey Zoo.

The fieldwork was kindly funded by Jersey Overseas Aid to further public engagement with their conservation livelihood project in Madagascar, which aims to enhance the wellbeing of over 2,000 nature-dependent households in 14 communities through improved food security, reproductive health, and better access to community finance schemes in a way that also reduces negative impacts on the long-term sustainability of their natural resource base.

Many thanks to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust team in Madagascar and my research assistant, RAZAFIMANTSOA Sahobiniriana Tsiky Mamy Ifitiavaniaina.

This is a stereo version of a 7-channel work.

Fiovan'ny ala

This is Oare Marshes, up the Saxon Shore Way. Seawater fills the saltmarsh. Wind brushes through thick reeds, bullrushes, birds’ wings. 

Listen out for: Black-headed Gull, Canada Goose, Cetti’s Warbler, Chaffinch, Coot, Crow, Curlew, Dunlin, Dunnock, Great Tit, Green-winged Teal, Greylag Goose, Herring Gull, Little Grebe, Mallard, Marsh Frog, Moorhen, Oyster Catcher, Pheasant, Redshank, Reed Warbler, Robin, Sedge Warbler, Skylark, Water Rail, Wood Pigeon, Wren

Mersh

Around you lies the gentle valley, green meadows and the soft sound of cattle bells. Above, huge grey ridges loom through gaps in the dappled trees, majestic and terrifying in their enormity.

Lesson

Lescun

For Cello and Electronics.

Waxing gibbous: a lunar phase where the moon appears more than half lighted but less than full. Shifting sunlight casts into relief the landscape and texture of the moon's surface, but parts of the edge remain hazy and dark.

Waxing Gibbous

Stand on the cliff and breathe. Can you feel the great swathe of sea air, the salt, the sky, the horizon, move within the space behind your ribs?

Blue Lungs

“…the Harpies of the lovely hair, Okypete and Aello, and these two in the speed of their wings keep pace with the blowing winds, or birds in flight, as they soar and swoop, high aloft.”  
- Hesiod 
 
“Bird-bodied, girl-faced things they are… their hands are talons, their faces haggard with hunger insatiable.” 
- Virgil 
 
“Clawed feet and swollen feathered bellies; they caw their lamentations in the eerie trees.” 
- Dante

This is a stereo version of a 4-channel piece.

Okypete And Aello

Gethsemane explores the prayers and pain of Jesus and the dreams of the sleeping disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, the day before the crucifixion. It features the line, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done’ in the following languages: English, German, Portuguese, Irish, Urdu, Chinese, Japanese, Bini and Ndebele. Gethsemane moves, dreamlike, between the words of Jesus and the natural ambience of the garden at night

Gethsemane

Standing Man is a site-specific performance and protest for the Late Night Radicals event on the 9th May 2019 at the People’s History Museum, Manchester. 
Inspired by Erdem Gunduz’s #duranadam protest in Taksim Square, 2013, Standing Man is a sonic exploration of the power of gathering together, and the power of communications technology in strengthening and spreading a cause.

Standing Man

Sarah is an electroacoustic composer, PhD researcher and performer based in Manchester, UK. She graduated from the University of Manchester in 2017 with a first class MusB (hons) in Music and the P.J. Leonard First Prize for Electroacoustic Composition, and completed an Advanced Diploma in Sound for Film, Games and TV at SSR in 2018. In 2019, she completed a Masters in Electroacoustic Composition and Interactive Media, with Distinction. Her works have been performed at the ICMC, EASTN-DC, Radio CASo, Reform Radio, MANTIS, Diffrazioni Festival, Espacios Sonoros, Ecos Urbanos, NMNW, and SHETogether. Her work has also been released by ABLAZE Records on the album Electronic Masters vol. 8. Sarah is a member of the Millenium Composers Initiative, and her work has been kindly supported by the Francis Chagrin Award.

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In September 2020, Sarah started an AHRC NWCDTP funded PhD in electroacoustic composition at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the use of animal sounds within electroacoustic composition to create new sonic means for conservation awareness, education, and nature connection.

sarah.keirle

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