The Abbot’s Cliff sound mirror appears in the 1941 watercolour “Bombing the Channel Ports” by war artist Eric Ravilious (1903-1942).
Bombing the Channel Ports© IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 1588)
Compare the painting with this May 2003 photo:
Thanks to Eddie Bromhead for letting me know about the painting.
The Denge sound mirrors have proved to be a popular location for music videos and associated photo shoots, and are included in a new book called Rock Atlas, by David Roberts.
The author has got in touch to tell me that: The 304-page, full-colour guide book includes 689 fascinating British and Irish music locations and the stories behind them. Written and researched by former Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums editor David Roberts, the book provides instructions on how to find each place of Rock and Pop pilgrimage, plus extensive lists of the birthplaces of every major musician.
The sound mirrors entry says:
The Dungeness coastal landscape is shaped by the strange architectural splendour of the sound mirrors that are featured as cover artwork on Turin Brakes’ Ether Song album and hit single ‘Long Distance’. Constructed as a Royal Air Force early warning system for incoming aircraft, the Denge mirrors are often referred to as ‘Listening Ears’ and have also featured in The Prodigy video for ‘Invaders Must Die’ and Blank & Jones‘ Monument album cover and video for ‘A Forest’.
LOCATION 147: between Lydd-on-Sea and Greatstone-on-Sea. Postcode: TN29 9NL. Access with guided walks. www.andrewgrantham.co.uk/soundmirrors
A sound mirror installation neat Slaithwaite in Yorkshire. Some pictures of it.
Commissioned by the River Colne Sculpture Trail and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
A Sound Installation by Matthew Sansom
About
Colne Valley Listeners employs active listening, both as metaphor and as practice, to explore and enhance the relationship between the valley’s beauty and significance with people past, present and future. The project combines a sculptural installation of two acoustic mirrors at the Rotcher Picnic Site and a guided soundwalk with accompanying audio.
The River Colne Acoustic Mirrors are parabolic dishes fashioned in aluminium: one dish eavesdrops on the approach from the picnic site and the other listens out towards the trees and across the valley. Close-up, these devices focus and subtly amplify the soundscape at a focal point a short distance from the centre of the dish. Interaction with the acoustic mirrors helps direct awareness towards the surrounding soundscape, leaving a subtle perceptual imprint on the listener.
The River Colne Soundwalk explores the location of the sculptural installation. It combines material from local children’s sonic explorations of the area, sound archive material and location recordings made along the walk.
Sounding Out Liverpool
Artist: Matthew Sansom
Location: St James’ Mount, Anglican CathedralGiant ‘sound mirrors’ tempt viewers to listen to the city through the artwork, which amplifies the continual flowing soundscape of the city and its inhabitants.
This artwork invites you to entertain and play, bounce your own stories, jokes or poems off the sound mirror, or recite extracts from the films, books and entertainers of Liverpool, whose words are etched on the surrounding ground.
It is open 14th-18th February 2011 (11.00-3.00pm) and 21st–25th February 2011 (11.00-3.00pm).
Hide and Seek Gallery “recently hung out with Quinn Gomez-Heitzeberg at the group show titled “Air” at the Corridor 2122 Gallery“, in Fresno, California. This show includes “Proposal for a Municipal Sound Mirror, 2001″, in wood, paper and model cars.
Just as sound travels as vibrations in air and light through the lumiferous aether, the sounds of phasma or “auditory ghosts” are conducted through the soniferous aether. A reflector constructed from resonant materials at a large enough scale may access these sounds when focused on an appropriate site.
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So now we know.
Between Channels: Edwardian gentlemen, muffled against the cold, are sat in the shelter of their giant concrete discs grimly waiting for the whisper of Zeppelins or Gothas which will bring down destruction on Holderness or Hythe …. a fossilised Jodderel bank, will always arouse the hauntological curiousity in me
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The Séance at Hob’s Lane by Drew Mulholland/Mount Vernon Arts Lab, seems to be another album with the Denge mirrors on the cover.
Next John is off to England to to photograph the Sound Mirrors around the Kent area (including the truly astounding Denge sound mirrors – click on the photos below to see a larger version) and to do some recording of the sounds they reflect. I am jealous LOL – they are such amazing structures, what a good find. I can only imagine the sounds and photos that John will get.
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Christopher Nelson’s Poetry Blog has an interview with Andrew Joron, “the metaphysician-elect of contemporary American poetry”, about his book The Sound Mirror.
Nelson: Your title, The Sound Mirror—can you elaborate on that synesthetic paradox? Or would that be to explain away the pleasant mystery?
Joron: In one sense, the idea of a “sound mirror” is not a paradox. Part of the science of acoustics is concerned with the way sound is reflected from surfaces such as the walls of a concert hall. And before the invention of radar, England constructed huge hemispherical “sound mirrors” out of concrete and placed them in open fields as listening devices that would amplify the sound of approaching bombers from Germany. In my case, I appropriated the title from an old Sun Ra LP, which has never been reissued on CD. Sun Ra himself got the title from the first commercially available recording device, released in the forties, which was called The Sound Mirror. But you’re right to note my intent to complicate the sound/light relation in presenting this title. Writing that uses the phonetic alphabet becomes a “sound mirror”; I want to emphasize that, while sound may be exiled from the written word, it continues to haunt the scene—the seen—of writing.
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Sound Mirrors at Diagonal Thoughts, “some notes on seeing and being, sound and image, media and memory”.
Graphics.com has an interview with Troika Design Studios which discusses the “Sonic Marshmallows” sound mirror-inspired installation at Wat Tyler country park in Essex.
We see Sonic Marshmallows more as a manifestation of people’s desire to interact with each other, rather than with things. Sonic Marshmallows can be used only in conjunction with another user. Sound mirrors were originally used on the coast of Kent to detect incoming enemy planes, not far from the location were Sonic Marshmallows is installed now. We used the same technology in a way that enables people to communicate with each other instead.
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