TRISTAN LOUTH-ROBINS
| FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM) (2011-present)

FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM) (2011-present)
Sound map.

Since 2011, sonically significant sites on the Fleurieu Peninsula have been sought out and recorded. Sites are chosen on the basis of their geographic, phenomelogical, aesthetic and/or historical significance.

FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM): link

The following extended text is taken from a blog post written in April 2017 regarding the sound map and my connection to the region.

Over the past couple of weekends L and I have made our way down the coast to check out a few events happening as part of the annual Festival Fleurieu program. On the first weekend we checked out longtime family friend, Ruth Eisner's open studio at her wonderful property, Mulberry Farm; then this weekend we checked out a couple of exhibitions and attended a concert by Margie Russell at the Yankallila Agricultural Hall supper rooms. Both trips have been enjoyable and revitalising since it's been great to get down my hometown digs and catch up with some folks I haven't seen in a while. This weekend also provided a good opportunity to make some more field recordings for my FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM) project which is now in its seventh year.

FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM) beginnings

From 2011-2012 the FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM) gathered momentum with a flurry of activity as I darted all over the region with a handheld recorder in tow. This was an exciting time as I found myself revisiting familiar places and redicovering them with a fresh aesthetic appreciation. At the time I had an Edirol HR handheld recorder for my captures, and whilst it was up to task most of the time, its flimsy windshield and noisy preamp prevented me from capturing certain environments faithfully - where winds sheared over the microphone's diaphragm, or conversely where environments were so quiet that the noise floor of the device would be the most prominent feature in the recording.

Beyond the recorder itself, I started building my own hydrophones as a way of capturing sonic activity in bodies of water. I went through a number of hydrophone variations incorporating piezo transducers enclosed within pill boxes, film canisters, shoe polish cans and on one occasion, a condom. What I realised - each time I heard the DIY hydrophone fill with water - was that I probably wasn't up to the task of making hydrophones that are reliably water tight and that I should get around to buying some, which I did later on. Still, a couple of my inventions worked for a while and captured some nice sonic activity in water and beneath sandy substrates.

One of the reasons why 2011-12 was such a fertile period for skipping all over the region and making hundreds of records was because I was engaged in an art project with the WIRED Lab and Country Arts SA which would culminate in the latter half of 2012 with the National Regional Arts Festival, Kumawuki in Goolwa. Our work, Southern Encounter was a group multimedia work and my headphone installation,  Echocline featured field recordings from around the region.

With this project behind me by the end of 2012, in the following years I managed to keep exploring the region and expanding the sound map, largely thanks to routinely visiting the sculpture I constructed south of Lady Bay and compiling an album of Fleurieu-centric field recordings for my 3Leaves edition,  The Path Described (2013).

Five Year Itch

Prior to heading back down south for the Festival events this month, I realised it had been over a year since I'd last updated the sound map. The last update in February 2016 included a dearth of material from a weekend in Carickalinga the previous year and a single recording made in Yankalilla during January 2016. In spite of finding time to get down to the region I was finding it to be a struggle to find new locations to capture, let alone finding reason or motivation to capture particular locations.

It didn't help that some of the locations I found (when I had a recording device with me) just weren't very interesting at all.

Why bother recording this location? Why am I here? Nothing's happening at all! OK, I haven't documented this particular location, but let's be honest there's nothing going on here and I believe that nothing is going to happen. I'm wasting my time here.

This was happening a lot. I'd arrive at a location with the best intentions and nothing would happen at all, or - to an equally frustrating extent - a potentially good recording where a chosen element unique to the location was clearly emphasised would be compromised by a human (I presume) cranking up a chainsaw, angle-grinder or techno album somewhere nearby. I was caught between two extremes on an axis of a) nothing or b) too-much-information - the former is a waste of everyone's time, the latter is a blemished document.  I was becoming fed up with the whole process and the limitations of what I could achieve with my equipment on hand. I was still restricted to a handheld recorder since I didn't have the motivation to invest in more high scale equipment due to my growing discontent with my sound practice at the time (see the blog post, What's Happening #1: Therapy for more on this.)

So I purposefully took a break from updating the sound map. When L and I went down to visit the Nude sculpture in August 2016 it was the first time I hadn't taken my recorder with me, instead opting for my camera to document the state of the largely destroyed sculpture.

Solastalgiac

Diverging from the sound map, over the years I've watched the Fleurieu region change in visible increments, noticing prominent swathes of vegetation reclaiming the hills and gullies whilst conversely land is cleared and houses pop up in towns and on their outskirts. The tension between nature and human activity is particularly felt on the Fleurieu. It occasionally causes a measure of anxiety in me.

I remember the first time I felt an unease towards changes in the surrounding landscape. In the early 1990's a large parcel of agricultural land was sold off near Lady Bay and a large scale housing development covered the hillside and a golf course was carved out of the ground. The Links Lady Bay took a long time to get going and for its first decade it looked like a geniune folly with only a few houses constructed and the golf course stalled at nine holes and situated in what looked like a cow paddock (which is what it was previously). Now, over 25 years later it has the semblance of something like what the original scale model looked like when myself and the locals saw it proudly displayed under perspex outside Normanville's shopping centre. Elsewhere, other pockets of land have been sold away and a combination of residential and holiday houses spread over plains near the town.

It's a delicate topic of discussion for a town like Normanville. After all, a significant chunk of the region's economy and employment has relied on tourism and development since the 1970s. The resort at Wirrina Cove was one of the first developments of this kind in the area. I completely appreciate this reality and that this sort of progress in regional towns around Australia is a vital component to keeping communities intact.  The Links development and its golf course are hugely beneficial to the area and it employs plenty of people including some I knew in high school. The compromise is, of course trading off bits of the landscape (and potentially the environment) for progress. Within the scope of my experience, this can be summed as a solastalgia of sorts and has comprised a large part of my ongoing relationship with the region when I was living there and when ever I've returned.

The term solastalgia was coined by Australian researcher, Glenn Albrecht to describe the emotional impact on the inhabitents of a community who experience significant changes to their immediate and/or surrounding landscape. Albrecht's case study that derived this term related to the impact felt by communities in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales where the large scale expansion of open cut mines had radically altered surrounding landscapes whilst impacting aspects of the environment - such as the air quality and wildlife. Aside from communities' ongoing concern with open-cut mines, unconventional gas extraction and a certain coal port development threatening the Great Barrier Reef, a significant issue for communities is the sprawl of suburban developments which encrope into native vegetation or agricultural land.

In the case of sprawl, this is what one will see as you make your way  to the western coast of the Fleurieu. From Noarlunga through Seaford to Aldinga and Port Willunga, expanses of large houses pop up, creep and rub against pockets of farmland. So again we return to that onerous issue of progress and what we're willing to compromise for it. From the vantage of what's been happening in and around Normanville over the past 30 years, this is small fish compared to things like the current aberration that is Seaford's Vista development which saw a huge chunk of farmland progressively covered with McMansions and an obligatory Aldi supermarket. Enough said - I won't go there for risk of steering this post into rant territory; my cup of tea's not strong enough to clearly articulate where that particular thread is heading. Another time, maybe.

Thankfully, nobody is mining for coal or extracting gas in or around Normanville, there aren't plumes of coal dust filling the air and there are no spikes in lung infections or cancer in the community. All that is really happening is that more houses are being built to accomodate growing families whilst fufilling a demand for more holiday accomodation in the area.

When I reflect on such a thing it seems like the term solastalgia was custom built for such a dramatically nostalgic individual myself - one who is so acutely affected, moved or piqued by the slightest of change to an environment. I believe this is one of the reasons why I started the FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM) - where photographic media failed to adequately document (and in some way preserve) a place, the audio option would come in.

The here and the now

Given the struggles with my mental health this year, my lifelong tendency to get so hung up on the rampant scourge of humans and their prediliction or expand their turf across and into everything might not seem like such a good thing to ruminate on, especially when I'm making an effort to clear my head of particular anxieties. However, to my suprise (and relief) I found on my recent trips to Normanville that my concerns relating to this have diluted somewhat and that I'm comfortable accepting it as more of a drift of 'stuff that happens'. I'm cool with it - as long as everyone looks after the native vegetation, sand dunes, animals and stops pumping vile shit into the Bungala River.

The places we inhabit hold a deep significance for us. We feel connected to them through memories, objects, landscapes as well as the mysteriously intangible - the things we can't quite put our finger, eye or ear to. Familiarity and change are part of this drift. There's such a strong poetic to a hometown and through the FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM) and its various field recordings I found myself slipping further into the mystery of the town I grew up and its surrounding areas. Since it continues to change and unfold, I don't see any reason why the FLEURIEU & KI SOUND MAP (FKISM) should end - or ever end for that matter. I've just got to scope out some interesting locations and wait patiently for the angle grinders to abate. Unless of course the recording emphasises the angle grinders. It could happen.

So, with that in mind there will be some new additions to sound map shortly. It's something a little different and it may potentially raise some new questions and possibilities for this project. But more on that when I get around to posting.

In the meantime, drift on.

TLR, April 2017.


First FSM recording trip. A break a Lady Bay, July 2011. Image: TLR.

Recording a morning tide at Lady Bay, July 2011. Image: TLR

Recording at the opening of Rapid Bay cave, February 2012. Image: Lauren Playfair.

Recording at dawn at Milang, looking over Lake Alexandrina, May 2012. Image: TLR.

Preparing to record on the southern beach of Horseshoe Bay, July 2012. Image: Lauren Playfair.

Recording with hydrophones on the Goolwa Barrages, October 2012. Image: TLR.

Recording at Waitpinga camping ground, January 2014.

A very casual recording on the Normanville boardwalk, April 2017.

Recording at the highest land elevation on the Fleurieu Peninsula - Parawa, September 2017.