This year’s final RMCP guided walk to the Denge mirrors is on Sunday 11 September 2011 at 14:00.
Author: Andrew Grantham
Forgotten technologies: Giant ears of concrete
“Vergessene Technologien – Riesenohren aus Beton” (Forgotten technologies – Giant ears of concrete) is a 23 May 2011 German-language article by Solveig Grothe on the website of Spiegel. It has a history of sound mirror development between the wars, and features some photos of sound mirrors from the Sound Mirrors Flickr group (used with the permission of the photographers).
With reinforced concrete shells the size of a house, the British listened in the 20s and 30s for enemy aircraft. The acoustic experiments along the coast gave the island extraordinary architectural monuments – and an interception technique to which was used to the outbreak of World War II.
Und jetzt, die artikel auf Englisch: Listening for the Enemy, Giant Ears on the British Coast
2011 guided walks to the Denge sound mirrors
Planned dates for public access to the Denge sound mirrors in 2011 have been announced on the Notice Board section of the Romney Marsh Countryside Project website.
There is one open day this year, and two guided walks. These events don’t need to be booked and are free, but rely on donations to cover the costs with at least £2 per person suggested.
- Open day 10:00-17:00 Sunday 24 July 2011
- Guided walk 14:00 Sunday 21 August 2011
- Guided walk 14:00 Sunday 11 September 2011
More information at the RMCP website. Anyone planning to attend these events should obviously confirm details with the RMCP before travelling.
Remember, the RMCP events are the only way to visit the Denge mirrors. The walks are very popular, and well worth doing.
Colne Valley listeners
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.
The Tizard Mission
… visual detection was often hampered by the island nation’s overcast skies, and the technological means of spotting aircraft were primitive at best. One scheme involved a massive concrete “sound mirror” that picked up the noise of an approaching engine—unfortunately, though, the device wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between the invading Luftwaffe and a passing British lorry. A technological breakthrough was needed….
Source: Review of “The Tizard Mission” by Stephen Phelps at the Wall Street Journal, 2011-03-12
Amusingly, alongside the review is a link to an article Opinion: Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl by a William Tucker. Obviously this isn’t the William S Tucker who was involved in the development of sound ranging!
Interesting mirror at Interesting Times
Sound effects is a 20 August 2010 posting about the Kilnsea sound mirror at Mike Higginbottom’s Interesting Times website.
Among the First World War fortifications that protected eastern England from the German threat is a curious lump of concrete in a field north-west of the Godwin Battery on the coast at Kilnsea on the way to Spurn Point. This enigmatic piece of concrete is an acoustic mirror …
Sound mirrors in Liverpool Anglican cathedral
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).
Construction of the Abbot’s Cliff mirror
Pete Graves e-mails to say the Abbot’s Cliff sound mirror was constructed by Lewis Brothers, Builders, of Dover. My father-in-law was apprenticed to Lewis’s in 1926 as a carpenter, and he worked on the wooden form-work around which the concrete for the mirror was ‘cast’. My father-in-law never visited the site and neither have my wife and I!”
Sound mirrors and the soniferous aether
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.
more…
So now we know.
A fossilised Jodrell Bank?
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.