Scott Hawkins has been documenting, cataloging and performing at Sites of Special Sonic Interest across the UK. I classify a performance as any kind of physical interaction resulting in an audible product. Here, looking into the eye of the Sound Mirror at Kilnsea on Spurn Head, the wind (persistent ghostly presence) combined to produce and aerophonic ambient extravaganza.
Archive for the ‘Sound mirrors’ Category
Sites of Special Sonic Interest
Sunday, December 21st, 2008Disinformation and Sound Mirrors
Sunday, December 7th, 2008Roadside Picnics – Disinformation and Sound Mirrors
by Joe Banks & Caroline Grigson
The following text was written in 1997, but did not appear in print until it featured under the title “Antiphony Architectural Supplement” on pages 57-64 of issue 6 of Sound Projector – an experimental noise magazine published in 1999 (Sound Projector is still going strong, but issue 6 is no longer available). The “Antiphony Architectural Supplement” was published to document and explore ideas suggested by the imagery of the Disinformation “Antiphony” double CD and “Antiphony Video Supplement” (later retitled “Blackout”) – both created in 1997, which featured images by photographer Julian Hills and film-maker Barry Hale of air defence Sound Mirrors found at various sites on the UK coast.
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The solution was provided by an article by W. Harms in Shortwave Magazine, which described a series of massive concrete monoliths which still stand, slowly crumbling into waste-land at a site near Dungeness in Kent. These structures, built in the 1920s and 1930s, formed a primitive experimental early-warning system – several elegant, but extremely austere concave shapes designed to allow the precise triangulation of directional-fixes on the distant sounds of incoming enemy Zeppelins, aircraft and ships.
These shapes rise up out of the Kentish shingle like the strange ceremonial relics of a dead civilisation or unknown tribal culture (and if you consider military R&D as an anthropological entity as well as a purely technical enterprise, then perhaps this interpretation is not as wild as it seems). Appearing alongside a picture of the abandoned Church of St. Giles in the village of Imber (the ghost-town on the tank-ranges of Salisbury Plain) and digital artwork representing the anthropomorphic slang of the RAF, the sound mirrors provided photographer Julian Hills with his Disinformation ‘remix’ for “Antiphony”.
Extensive literature and archive research has so far uncovered a total of seventeen mirrors, sixteen on the Kent and Yorkshire coasts, and one at a site in Malta (which, according to Casemate magazine, is “approached through a slurry of cow muck and dead chickens”). Ten of these can still be visited today, one is buried, two have collapsed, while there are four more mirrors whose status remains, from my point of view, unknown. Architecturally many of the sound mirrors look as though they could have been designed yesterday, and it is on close inspection that they their true state of distress is revealed. It is hard not be impressed by this geometry – the striking contrasts between elegant, concave parabolas and their rough textures, their impressive solidity and substantial physical forms.
Sound mirrors near Dover (now buried)
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
Photo of the Fan Bay sound mirrors, which unfortunately are now buried. I went for a look round the area once, but failed to find evidence of them.
Sound mirror on album cover map
Friday, October 17th, 2008
Word Magazine’s World Album Covers has a Google Earth map showing where iconic album cover photographs were taken
, including Ether Song by Turin Brakes at the Denge sound mirrors.
Kilnsea sound mirror on the BBC
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
A huge concrete dish, pointing at the North Sea from an East Yorkshire field, was once a vital part of Britain’s defence system
says a BBC video about the Kilnsea acoustic mirror.
The interview with local historian Jan Crowther is part of the BBC Look North programme’s Abandoned series with Matt Richards.
Matt was recently in touch seeking information for a proposed broadcast about Drewton tunnel on the old Hull & Barnsley Railway.
Maghtab mirror pictures and a model
Sunday, October 5th, 2008“Norwichpaul” has posted some photographs of the 200ft long Sound Mirror at Maghtab in Malta on the Airfield Information Exchange forum.
Steven Vella of St Nicholas College in Malta has built a model of it.
A while ago I built a 4 mm/ft scale model of the somewhat smaller Tags: Malta
Posted in History, Sound mirrors | No Comments »
History of the Future of War Noises
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008The Sound Mirrors: A History of the Future of War Noises is a July 2008 article by Ithamar Silver from Le Panoptique.
Although “not part of architectural history proper,” a series of moss and graffiti covered ruins along England’s southeastern coast belies one of the more grandly misguided displays of national insecurity to be produced by the tumult of the twentieth century. The remains are as imposing and impenetrable as any fortress—yet these were not traditional fortifications meant to withstand an enemy onslaught, a fact that renders their solidity largely palliative.
They were, essentially, ears.
(where it says one in Boulby that had somehow been transformed into a private residence
, it should presumably read “Selsey”)
Meanwhile, Peter Frost has sent this photo of the Abbot’s Cliff sound mirror, which he came across whilst walking towards Dover from Capel-le-Ferne in Kent.
A sound mirror in Gibraltar?
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Paul Wells of doverpast.co.uk has found something in Gibraltar which looks rather like a sound mirror. But is it, or is it something else?
Last Denge sound mirror guided walk of 2008
Friday, September 12th, 2008
Sunday 14 September is the final chance in 2008 to visit the Sounds Mirrors at Lade Pit, near Dungeness.
The walk will be led by Dr Scarth, the world’s expert on sound mirrors and author of the book Echoes from the Sky, who will tell the fascinating story behind them.
The meeting point is at 2pm in Lade car park opposite Taylor Road on Coast Drive, approximately half way between the Pilot Pub and Romney Sands (grid reference TR 085 208).
There is no charge, but donations are appreciated. No booking is required.
See the Romney Marsh Countryside Project website for details.
Il Widna – the Maltese sound mirror
Sunday, September 7th, 2008
The only sound mirror to be built outside England is a 200 foot example in Malta. When I visited the country earlier this year, I couldn’t miss out on the chance to go to see it.
Here are some photos and some background details of its history, and also details of how to find it.
