One recording from a series of studies, exploring the sonic geology of extinct species. In this case a fragment of shell from a fossilised dinosaur egg is dipped in vinegar in order to release the ancient CO2 stored within it. The sample is a Saltasaurus egg, laid over 65 million years, at a nesting in Patagonia, Argentina.
The complete series of studies are available as: ˈtʃɔːk : eight studies of hearing loss: a limited edition Cdr and digital download from very quiet records.

Saltasaurus

Excerpt from rain choir: a site-specific sound installation for the crypt of Winchester Cathedral.  This recording was made in the crypt during the exhibition of the installation.

after the rain

Commissioned for the BBC Radio 3 series, Between The Ears, this sound piece reflects on voice, memory and loss. The sound work takes the form of an audio memoir or reverie, based on over four decades of recordings of my mother’s voice.  The programme explores not only my personal relationship with my mother’s voice , but also our common desire to record and keep, and the particular qualities of recorded voice as distinct from the photographic record. 
The programme was produced in Bristol by Chris Ledgard. 

It's Just Where I Put My Words

Sorting through my old sound recordings and I came across this small forlorn and tethered jetty. Recorded a few years ago, the jetty featured in the Hamble soundscape which was part of 'southerlies' available on Gruenrekorder. 

forlorn jetty

I found this very odd sound, submerged in the dipping pond at Winnall Moors, Winchester UK. To me it sounds territorial in pattern and more like an insect than a reptile (toad). Has anyone any idea what it is? The full recording is six-minutes long and the pattern disappears, then re-emerges. I was using a hydrophone made by Jez Riley French (thank you Jez).


Subterranean what?

Sketch for a live dissolve: Foraminifera (from Winchester Cathedral)) soaked in formic acid.

foraminifera

air on a hinge is based on field-recordings from the door of the Black Beacon on Orford Ness. As part of the former radar system (Orfordness Rotating Wireless Beacon)the Black Beacon once intermittently broadcast the morse code letters 'V' and 'B', now the hinged air pronounces its own alphabet, its ethereal dot and dash a persistent unanswered signal, enunciating loss.

air on a hinge

A hydrophone is laid in the path of a small river as it flows into Daymer bay. The grains of  sand are washed over the microphone, slowly covering it and muting its sound. A small group of children build a dam across the river, when this breaks, the river washes away the sand, briefly unearthing the hydrophone before covering it in sand and silence once more. 
Based on hydrophone and contact microphone recordings made at Daymer Bay, Cornwall, England. 
      

Quartz: Daymer Bay

The strike of a match recorded acoustically. This is part of a series of field-recordings for a new sound piece made as an interpretation of a film about air.
Headphones recommended.

one: air piece

This is an edited version of the rain choir variation performed as part of an evening of sound curated by Mark Peter Wright at the IMT Gallery,  London in November 2015.
The performance included the 'live' sound of fossilised and red corals dissolving in formic acid.

rain choir: the dead sea variation live at IMT Gallery

In May 2016 I will leave the building where I have worked for the last twelve years. A former Victorian school, the architecture is evangelical, with vast windows and high ceilings. But the building is to be demolished in 2017. In an act of remembrance I made some recordings of rain falling through the guttering system of the building: a sound, which has been falling for decades and only now have I listened. Headphones recommended.

a guttering of rainfall

soundscape recording for radio. Sounds recorded at the Watercress Line; a steam train railway that runs between Alresford and Alton in Hampshire.

WaterCress Line

rain on a closed curve

Earlier this year I was asked by the artist Anna Cady if I would be interested in contributing to 'Water', the next film from her ‘co-creative’ project, 'Elemental Dialogues'. I received a link to a muted version of the film and was asked to use my own practice to ‘interpret or translate’ it. I felt the best way to translate, the film was to watch it a few times, and then to look away and let my memory work upon it. I sketched out a score in memory of the imagery.
The translation focuses on the sense of space and temporality present in the film: the depth and distance created as images submerge and emerge in the surface tension of the film. The composition is not intended as a synchronised soundtrack, indelibly stuck to the film, but rather a work from water and memory, a sonic coincidence where sound and image may coalesce and discord.
More details here: https://sebastianehegarty.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/surface-tension-a-dialogue-with-water-and-memory/

from memory and water

One of a series of interventions in a wet landscape.

rain on a cheap guitar

Extract from the winnall moors summer sound walk. This section features the creak of trees, a cluster of grasshoppers and wasp mandibles. For further details and other sounds visit the winnallmoorssoundwalk.blog

Summerwalk: creaks, clusters & mandibles

extract from the completed autumn sound walk around winnall moors. This sections uses sounds taken from a wire fence, barricading the path into the moors, whilst emergency repairs to a water hatch were made. Drifting into this concrete soundscape are the voices and fireworks from the Bonfire PA in November.

autumn sound walk: fence with air, gait and fire

The sound of a solitary Leafcutter bee visiting one of the holes in my bee house. The bee keeps returning and appears to be building a 'den' inside one of the bamboo tubes. To exit the bee retreats and lifts backwards into the air. 

Bee(z) in the house

A recording of the water snails in suffolk, chewing on the green stems of aquatic plants.

the water snails of Suffolk

The ‘air harp’ is a cheap second-hand auto harp, prepared with jetsam found on the shingle of Dungeness. Performed by an occasional westerly wind, the automatic aeolian harp, uncovers the music slumbering in sea breezes. 
This field-recording was recorded in preparation for a micro-FM transmission at 'Fog Signal building', Dungeness.

Denge air harp no.3

Visual and sound artist living in Winchester, England.

sebastiane_hegarty

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