| CV | Workshop | Pages from Sound Walk book |
Lucie Potter's StatementMy work is concerned with place and revealing the hidden, using sound, story and historical research. For my residency at Tatton I had an idea of creating a sound walk but I was unsure where it would be. My initial researches mapped the park and gardens, using field recording, drawing and photography, and contextual historical research of Tatton Park. I chose the parkland for the walk route, because of the practical consideration of greater public access and the experience walking in the land gives. Away from the busy areas, sounds and amazing sights reveal themselves at a more contemplative pace and scale; whereas the gardens are more defined and potentially more intense spaces or settings.
For the field recording, I wanted to get a sense of the daily activities of Tatton’s wildlife and livestock both during and outside of visiting hours. Using different microphones, I captured many species of animals and the deer, from early morning to the middle of the night. I was keen to mix these sounds with binaurally recorded sound which, on playback over headphones, can give a startling re-enactment of such sounds, as if they are happening right there behind, above, in front of the listener. I took the idea of a day at Tatton to structure the Sound Walk.
I looked at how the land has changed in use and appearance throughout history and plotted this against wider changes taking place in England and Europe, using the guidebooks on Tatton, as well as the archives at Tatton and Chester Records Office. A key interest for me is people’s relationships with land. Living in the city as an adult, I grew up in the countryside, spending long hours on my uncles’ farms. My work at Tatton is in part an attempt to articulate the history of the tensions between land as a leisure space and land that is worked and managed, as well as my own nostalgic impulses.
I was given a lot of support by the different departments at Tatton for my historical research and the field research out in the parkland. The Park Rangers were especially helpful, taking me bird watching and on the deer feed many times. I invited people connected with Tatton to tell me about the park. Staff, past and present, recorded their stories and interviews and I recorded sound effects with staff and visitors.
From these different strands of research I developed a script and worked with mansion house staff to record the narration for it. It was important to involve others in the work, to explore ideas around history and belief. The script was a starting point and developed as we worked. The resulting sound work uses the parkland as a setting, where different events from the past unfold. Taking the sound walk initiates a series of ambivalent relationships: between the audio of the sound walk and the ambient sound of the park; time past and time present; and in the stories told: where the divisions between factual interview and scripted narration start to slide; all couched within the evocative and special experience of listening and walking in the parkland.
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