Sounds from Dangerous Places

Sounds from Dangerous Places asks “What can we learn of dangerous places by listening to their sounds?”

Recent travels have brought me into contact with some difficult and potentially dangerous places. Most are areas of major environmental/ecological damage, but others are nuclear sites or the edges of military zones. The danger is not necessarily to a short-term visitor, but to the people of the area who have no option to leave or through the location’s role in geopolitical power structures. Dangerous places can be both sonically and visually compelling, even beautiful and atmospheric. There is, often, an extreme dichotomy between an aesthetic response and knowledge of the ‘danger’, whether it is pollution, social injustice, military or geopolitical.

Places visited include: the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine: the Caspian Oil Fields, Azerbaijan: North Wales, UK, where Chernobyl fallout affected sheep farming practice
until 2012: nuclear, military and greenhouse gas sites in the UK including Sellafield, Dungeness, Bradwell, Sizewell, Thetford Forest, Rainham and Uttlesford.

Field recordings, photographs, conversations, scientific and other information were collected at the sites and have been used for talks, lectures, radio programs, gallery installations, and publications. The ‘Sounds from Dangerous Places’ CDs and accompanying 80-page book present recordings, images and writing from Chernobyl, the Caspian Oil Fields and UK sites.

• http://sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/