The cover of "Wetland Project" features a scannable QR code that can connect you with sounds of nature as you read this article.
Wetland Project is no ordinary book. On quick glance, the QR code on the front cover evokes thoughts of mundane tasks like checking prices or scanning a boarding pass. The pixilated geometry, embossed over a rippled span of verdant water, is accompanied by a single word: Listen. Scan the code with your phone and soon your ears are awash in the throaty yearnings of lovesick Pacific chorus frogs.
Leafing through the book is equally disorienting. Here your eyes must navigate a cascade of vibrant pages, each a different colour – crimson, teal, vermilion, olive, cerulean and many others. The effect is entrancing, even if the accompanying text is sometimes a little hard to read. The colours are the product of a mysterious algorithm that transforms sound into colour. Essentially, you are viewing an abstract colour-field representation of what you are hearing.
Sample pages from “Wetland Project: Sound, Ecology and Post-Geographical Art.”
This fascinating book by two British Columbia artists, Mark Timmings and Brady Marks, is the latest phase of a decade-long multidisciplinary exploration of a sound-rich marsh on Saturna Island, one of the loveliest of the Southern Gulf Islands and just a ferry hop from Vancouver. Timmings lives near the wetland, home to red-winged blackbirds, orange-crowned warblers, northern saw-whet owls and countless other species. Interspersed throughout the book are photographs by Nancy Angermeyer that lovingly capture the dappled light, surface reflections and tangled vegetation. Looking at them, it’s easy to think of Monet’s paintings at Giverny, although this is a natural Eden, not one sculpted by human hands.
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Brady Marks monitors the field recording in progress on April 26
2016. (photo by Nancy Angermeyer)
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Mark Timmings works with recording engineer Eric Lamontagne to place microphones on a fallen tree at the centre of the ṮEḴTEḴSEN wetland on April 25
2016. (photo by Nancy Angermeyer)
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The wetland soundscape is captured in a 24-hour, five-channel field recording on April 26 and April 27
2016. (photo by Eric Lamontagne)
At the project’s core is a 24-hour “slow radio” broadcast of field recordings that have been aired in North America and Europe on Earth Day since 2017. QR codes to access this audio can be found throughout the book, which readers navigate using not page numbers but the 24-hour clock – times printed on each page run from 00:00 to 23:55 and correspond to what’s happening sonically at that time of day.
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Sample pages from “Wetland Project: Sound, Ecology and Post-Geographical Art.”
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The vocal ensemble, musica intima, performs “Wetland Senario” at the Contemporary Art Gallery
Vancouver on April 28, 2018 (photo courtesy CAG)
The book includes a musical score, Wetland Scenario. Composed by Timmings and his neighbour, the late musical scholar Stephen Morris, it has been performed by music intima, a Vancouver vocal ensemble. If you can sight read, you can try singing it. The composition is set up like conventional choral music with, for example, a chestnut-backed chickadee calling tee-dee-dee on a soprano line and a Swainson’s thrush going “whit … whit” on an alto line.
Also on offer are texts from various contributors. Canadian sci-fi writer William Gibson revels in the durational aspect of the project’s sonic landscape, finding it “deep, horizonless, unlike anything I’ve previously experienced.” Green Party leader Elizabeth May, the region’s MP, underlines the ecological value of wetlands – they store up to a third of the world’s terrestrial carbon, protect and purify vital water sources, mitigate against flooding and provide critical habitat for many species, including those that ensure sustainable fisheries. May notes that more than a third of the world’s wetlands have disappeared since 1970. They are being destroyed faster than the world’s forests, she says, and are the most endangered ecosystem on the planet.
Philip Kevin Paul, a WSÁNEĆ poet, teacher and scholar, says bogs are important and sacred places in Indigenous culture. He mentions the importance of approaching the land with authentic curiosity, which requires listening. “If the settlers that came here originally had first engaged in authentic curiosity through listening, they would have learned from us … what we had to say about the place and about the world around us.”
“Wetland Project,” new media installation (5:30 a.m.: dawn bird chorus) at VIVO Media Arts Centre
Vancouver, April 21 - May 18, 2018 (photo by VANDOCUMENT)
The book also features comments from people around the world who have tuned in to the project’s 24-hour Earth Day broadcasts. Vancouver’s Lisan Kwindt describes it as “soothing and reassuring and mesmerizing.” Dan J. Anderson calls it “a potent reminder of how the world ought to sound.”
Indeed. Humanity’s shocking assault on the environment – including urban sprawl, wetland drainage, mass extinctions, climate change and all the rest – has diminished the rich variety of the world’s natural soundscapes. As environmentalist David Suzuki has observed, humanity’s health and wellbeing depend on the natural world, yet we are increasingly isolated from it. This book and its resonant audio – a celebration of nature, but also, paradoxically, a lament – are both a bracing tonic and an urgent call to action. ■
Wetland Project: Explorations in Sound, Ecology and Post-Geographical Art by Mark Timmings and Brady Marks: Figure 1, 2022. With contributions by William Gibson, Elizabeth May, Susan McMaster, Stephen Morris, Alex Muir, Philip Kevin Paul, Dylan Robinson, Hildegard Westerkamp and Laurie White. Learn more here.
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