PART II: DROWNED, DRAINED & IMMERSED (PROPOSED PROJECT)

Long-term goals:

Immersive VR and audio experiences, bringing remote rural Scottish wetlands (rare and threatened habitats) to city locations in creatively-powerful ways.
Installations to explore both above and within “the bog”. Connecting to cultural heritage, folklore, wildlife and landscape themes.
Transportation to otherworldly underwater realms. Connecting to ideas from ancient ritualistic practice e.g. “Bog Bodies”.

Next steps:

Combining audio-visual materials like those below, with field recordings from different wetland landscapes.

Exploring placement of amps, live electric guitars, live drums, speakers (landscape field recordings and samples) around a gallery space, for manipulation by audience using pedals and created instruments (e.g. pickups, contact mics, bows, electric guitar strings), to interfere with distortion and sound bed.

Combining with immersive visuals in spaces such as Dream Machine in Glasgow.

Eventually moving into binaural field recordings, 360 audio and VR.

Below:

Photos by Didier Rochard’s landscape visit to Rannoch Moor as part of Drowned & Drained project (indicative of visual potential).

Audio demos showing the kinds of audio work that will be combined/experimented with.

Creative collaborators - Leo Hancill and Cat Redern.

Creative fuel from Scottish wetland heritage to capture the imagination - The Deskford Carnyx and Bog Bodies.

Audio demo from Rannoch Moor landscape visit by Didier Rochard

Something about the vastness of the moor was all-consuming.

Its dark pools and quaking bogs seemed to breathe and swallow.

The landscape was whole, alive and powerful in its empty loneliness.

It was showing me its strength.

And it wanted me to know that I meant nothing to it.

My world and my voice didn’t matter - it had decided I would be part of its story.

And it was bigger than me.

All this drowned land.

Lie down and find your way.

My child, I know it’s time, for we danced all night and all through the dawn.

All as one my lungs fill for all men.

All the dead and all the dark shall come and bring you back.

All this I know.

Here comes the storm that will blow through the trees.

That will blow you back down to me.

Collaboration

Creative partners, musicians Leo Hancill and Cat Redfern

Didier will work with Glasgow-based musicians Leo Hancill and Cat Redfern. Both play electric guitar, bass, drums and specialise in experimental effects. Leo builds simple electric instruments using pickups and contact mics. He also plays the bagpipes and has a strong interest in folk song and shanties. Cat Redfern also plays fiddle and folk guitar.

Cat Redfern is highly respected as one of the only female artists in the “doom metal” genre, which is heavily male-dominated.

Two genres - folk song and doom metal - are brought together in surprising ways, unlocking new creative potential. Doom metal drones create a soundbed on which to layer dark folk vocal harmony, carnyx samples (below) and landscape field recordings, which the audience can manipulate and interact with using pedals and simple pickup instruments. This plays on the sense of immersion/submergence.

CREATIVE FUEL = HISTORIC SCOtTISH “BOG FINDS”: THE DESKFORD CARNYX & BOG BODIES

Connecting audiences to Scottish heritage that is relevant to rare wetland habitats.