SOUNDS OF A MARSHLAND
Exploring Dartford's landscape. An audio visual project for the marshlands near the river Thames.
The Dartford Marshland, located between river Thames, river Darrent and the Dartford City center, carries a lot of history in its past and is having an eventful present. My aim was to bring back to life some of the past programs of the marshes, and enhance those that already exist by making them more accessible to the public. Each program that exists along the marshes has a different access route, meaning that currently you cannot get from one program to the other without entering the muddy marshland and sinking into it.
Through my walks in the North Dartford area, I experienced many different sides of the marshland. I walked (but mainly struggled not to sink into the muddy waters) next to cows, saw model airplane flying, enjoyed a lot of green landscape and got lost in the woodland of The Orchard. All these, I did in a big struggle with the landscape. There is an existing path called the Darrent Valley Path, that runs along the river. At some point, the path becomes hard to follow because of the floods that merged it with the marshland. Even though the path runs along the river, from the path only two of the programs are within sight to the public and even though you can see them, you cannot access them from the path.
Therefore, my aim was to develop the existing path to become easier to follow and extend it to run around a circle that goes through all the programs that exist on the marshland.
As I mention above, my aim was to bring past and present together by bringing to life some of the past programs that existed in the marshland. The way i decided to do this is by introducing sound sculptures that will enhance the experience of the visitor, without having to interfere with the visual landscape as it is.
The recreation of a program would happen by using sounds that remind of what the site used to be. Enabling the visitor to explore it by listening to the mixture of the current and past sounds. Sound landscaping will not exist throughout the path, because as i said, it is a combination of past and present, therefore the visitor should be able at some points to listen to what is now there.
These are the 7 programs that will exist on the path. I created introduction cards for each program, looking at the history and present story of each program. And also analyzing the existing sounds and the added sounds. These could even exist on the path as reference points.
The following images are sections of each program being used. Also some technical drawings on materials and design.
The timber used for the path planks is Grey Willow, a tree that grows the Dartford Marshes. Dowels are used to connect the timber planks of the path with the timber fixed onto the ground. The use of wood dowels was decided because even though they are very strong fixtures, I wanted something that can disintegrate in time, along with the path. Also, a galvanized metallic box with glass cover, that acts as a lightbox, illuminating the path during the night, is fitted into the wood near one of the ends. The lighting used will be LOW-PRESSURE-SODIUM lighting, which provide one of the most energy-efficient outdoor lighting. The poor color rendition the light has, acts as an advantage to the concept of the path, as it creates the perfect effect for my programs. Because of this light, the human eye sees most of the colors in shades of grey, therefore, this adds to the illusion of being transported to the past.
