Modelling the organic: 
Case study for the cultural value 
of vernacular forms of art production

Monica Biagioli
London College of Communication, University of the Arts London
London, England

m.biagioli@lcc.arts.ac.uk

Abstract

This report analyses a subset of data from fine art activity, applying a cultural modelling technique from the field of environmental social science to account for the depth and breadth of the contributions of organically-evolving fine art production towards wider debates surrounding cultural production and its role in society. Through this fine-grain exploration, the cultural value of fine art production and its contribution to wider society can be expressed in more discrete terms. The study uses findings from Sound Proof—a series of exhibitions responding to the London 2012 Olympics—in a case study applying methodology developed by Veronica Strang in ethnography. The artefacts produced for the first exhibition in the series, Sound Proof 1 (2008), are analysed and deconstructed into their constituent parts—words, sounds and images—in order to arrive at specific themes and findings regarding perspectives on the Olympic project just as construction was starting in the Stratford site of London in 2008. The key elements extracted and modelled into an overall composite are: topographic and ecological information, local histories, social and spatial information, ownership and rights of access, cultural understandings of the site, and resource use and management. The paper concludes that the exhibition’s cultural value is to commemorate the site and leave a record of its qualities for reference post-Olympics.

Introduction

Cultural historian Jakob Burckhardt makes an important distinction between messages and traces when discussing heritage transmitted from the past. Messages he sees as direct addresses to posterity—ad campaigns for recognition by future generations. Traces—or better yet unintentional traces—convey cultural memories with a forthrightness and authenticity often lacking in the messages from the past (Assman, 2008, p.98). One is massaged and mediated, the other intact and unadulterated.

This strand of research forms part of an overall investigation into the impact of cultural heritage activities in the social, economic and political spheres. The focus is on organically evolving cultural activity and its contributions towards narrating society’s evolution through a wider filter of voices, so as to provide a richer picture and enhance decision-making regarding application of resources for moving forward in society. The wider aim is to promote intuitive models of cross-pollinating fine art practice into local production centres so as to encourage more sustainable models of business activity. Part of the investigation involves examining methodologies for mapping cultural value of artistic activities so as to properly account for contributions made.

This report outlines findings from a subset of data culled from the Sound Proof series of exhibitions. The fine art series took place yearly from 2008 to 2012 as a collection of litmus test readings on the Stratford site of the London 2012 Olympics and the evolving mood and anticipation as the city prepared to play host to this worldwide event. Five exhibitions took place overall, producing 28 new art commissions, involving 21 artists, and documented in 5 exhibition multiples in various formats. Themes changed yearly, with sound as cartography (Sound Proof 1, 2008), sound as artefact (Sound Proof 2, 2009), sound as text (Sound Proof 3, 2010), sound as legacy (Sound Proof 4, 2011), and sound as voice (Sound Proof 5, 2012) as focus points for each exhibition. The data analysed here is from Sound Proof 1 and involves an examination of the visual and sonic artefacts from that series. Six artists/artist pairs participated in Sound Proof 1, producing a set of maps and sound recordings to be played at the exhibition that took place at E:vent Gallery in London, England in April/May 2008.

Background

The Sound Proof project ran for 5 years from 2008 to 2012 and featured artist responses to the Olympics site in Stratford, London as it increasingly transformed in preparation for the Games in 2012.

Sound Proof emerged from an organic process. What became a series of yearly exhibitions of commissioned artworks with a focus on sound began in 2007 with a walk of the Stratford site of the future 2012 Olympics. It was like being in a space suspended in time—in a state of becoming. Not quite what it appeared to be, not yet the place envisioned.

Colm Lally and I co-curated the first Sound Proof exhibition in 2008, commissioning six artists/artist pairs to respond to the site in the lower Lea Valley and to the wider issues and debates surrounding the Olympic project. Using sound materials, drawings and annotations, the participating artists created audio and visual maps to preserve observations of the transformation. Taking sound as an audio cartography, Sound Proof 1 formed a unique recording of a neighbourhood that would be unrecognisable by the time the Games arrived in 2012. The exhibition presented six 1-hour sound recordings assembled into a 6-hour programme, with an accompanying set of visual maps contained in a folio of maps. (Lally and Biagioli, 2008)

Upon completion of Sound Proof 1, I realised the potential for exhibitions to take place on a yearly basis not only to reflect on the changes to the site, but also to express the prevailing mood and the reaction to the Olympics as the event neared. And so I continued the Sound Proof project on my own, inviting contributions from curators, artists and project partners to develop the programme over time. Each yearly exhibition had a changing theme and new invited artist commissions. The independence of the project was fundamental in maintaining critical distance and achieving the even-handed perspective that allowed the artists freedom in expressing their views, whatever those might be.

Sound Proof in its yearly iterations was like a memory track of how the Stratford site took shape towards 2012, reflecting a complex layering of moods and views through the filter of artistic responses. 

Methodology

Whoever maps the space gives that landscape and location its territorial characteristics: what is in, what is out, what is named, what goes unnamed or unmarked. It is a way to define the space via contour and specification.(Biagioli, 2013) Aleida Assman explains this further: “…in considering maps…it is useful to consider what elements people have chosen to include or exclude; what is prioritized; how the images express relations between things; and how places, people and events are formally represented.”(Assman, 2008, p.147) And so it is that the three key elements to observe in maps are 1. the area described and method of description, 2. who made the map, when, and why? and 3. its use and application. (Strang, 2010, p.147) Through an examination of the visual and textual information in maps, their semiotic and symbolic structures can be decoded to reveal the social and political relationships that they embody. The means of expression of this information—the graphic forms applied in the maps—is the visual language that reveals the particular world view of the mapmaker; in this case, the artists in Sound Proof 1. (Strang, 2010, p.148)

This report applies a cultural mapping methodology from ethnographic studies as laid out by Veronica Strang in a chapter entitled Mapping histories: cultural landscapes and walkabout methods published in the book Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design. It involves an analysis of the visual, aural and textual materials produced for Sound Proof 1 as contained in A2 size maps (42 x 59.4cm), sound works, and artist statements produced for the six commissions, as well as an analysis of the exhibition map produced by Colm Lally contained in the folio of maps. Artists in Sound Proof 1 were Angus Carlyle, Brown Sierra (Pia Gambardella and Paddy Collins), Jem Finer, Sara Heitlinger and Franc Purg, Miller and McAfee Press (Andrew Miller and Duncan McAfee), and Vessna Perunovich in collaboration with Boja Vasic.

This report involves an evaluation of sound works as well as maps and although there is overlap in terms of how to break down the material, aural works require consideration of narrative interpretation as a means of observation. As Huberman and Miles set out, “Narrative analysis takes as its object of investigation the story itself…Interpretation is inevitable because narratives are representations…Human agency and imagination determine what gets included and excluded in narrativization, how events are plotted, and what they are supposed to mean. Individuals construct past events and actions in personal narratives to claim identities and construct lives.” (Huberman and Miles 2002, p.218 in Strang, 2010, p.148)

A close-grained analysis of visual, aural and textual material is applied to reveal recurrent themes and patterns for the artists and curators of Sound Proof 1. Key elements collected here are: topographic and ecological information; local histories; socio-spatial information; ownership and rights of access; cultural understandings of the environment; and, resource use and management. (Strang, 2010, p.133)

Findings
Topographic and ecological information

The most fertile findings from Sound Proof 1 were in the area of topographic and ecological information culled through the finely-noted observations of the artists at the Stratford site and recorded through audio and visual means. Information about wildlife populations extant at the time of recording, landmarks of the area at the time of construction, impressions of passers-by about the changes taking place, and views expressed by the artists regarding the wider Olympic project function in this way as a way of commemorating a site in transition. Additionally, this data set functions as a means of checking on the site post-Olympics: the type of habitat made available for wildlife to flourish once more and the way regeneration plans have taken shape in relation to intentions stated at the beginning of construction.

There was a sense of the historic, in a vernacular way, as the Sound Proof artists explored and documented the space before traces of its existing essence would be dug out into piles of dirt. Recording at the Stratford site happened between January and April of 2008, and accompanying Jem Finer (one of the artists) during his performance at the site, the first thing that struck me was the massive blue wall that had been erected since my last visit in 2007. It surrounded the entire area, with the distinctive blue paint used to mark out even bridges and access points, announcing the site’s state of becoming Olympic. I had not known about it and was totally unprepared for it. It was truly an incredible sight. Within a period of a few months, the landscape had been transformed from overgrown weeds and decrepit buildings alongside working factories and living accommodations (designated as brownfield land) to a cordoned off area surrounded by fencing and wire mesh, all painted in a memorable blue.

Brown Sierra’s map of the area—hand-drawn in coloured markers—indicated the key landmarks of their walk around the perimeter of the site. Gateways at Pudding Mill Road Station, Marshgate Lane, Warton Road, Carpenters Road, Temple Mill Lane, Clays Lane, Quarter Mile Lane, Waterden Road, and White Post Lane. Public phones at Pudding Mill Road Station, Abbey Lane, High Street (opposite Warton Road), Carpenter’s Road, Gibbins Road, Stratford Station, Angel Lane, and Alma Street. Found music cassette tapes at Marshgate Lane, High Street (opposite Abbey Lane), High Street (near Warton Road), Lund Point, Temple Mill Lane (near Leyton Road), Ruckholt Road, Eastway, and three in the Greenway. (Brown Sierra, 2008) These signposts of the terrain are now re-shaped and re-configured or lost altogether to the regeneration plans for the site.

For Jem Finer, there was a distinct sense of inside and outside created by the blue wall that symbolised for him the winners and losers of Olympic designation of the site. His hand-drawn map was made up of an outline of the fenced-off site and notations and drawings of key markers at the time. As part of his artist statement, he wrote: “outside the blue wall space and time are mapped by sound. Before the machines awake, gathered on the margins where the trees still stand, dawn birds sing in the silence. Later, to walk the perimeter is to navigate a sonic hall of mirrors. Direction becomes confused as the cacophony of construction spills the wall, echoing back and forth along the corridor of the canal side buildings.” (Finer, 2008) 

Angus Carlyle made repeated visits to the site in the early months of 2008, making his way “to a particular point of longitude and latitude”. (Carlyle, 2008) And in his sound work for the exhibition, he narrates: 
“Magpies are hopping between the pylons and the new earth. Their chattering, clattering calls like so many dice being thrown a coot drifts in circles down the canal, its mate stalks through the marshes at the water’s edge. Movements are marked by little acoustic explosions. Tings, thuts and pits. Herring gulls wheal and whine fussing their white, dry feathers through the damp and darkening air. The little robin has fluttered around the toe path all six times I’ve been down here. There’s usually toast, burnt offerings, for the red breast. The robins’ bursts of flight are accompanied by miniature roaring of wings which stop and start with admirable abruptness.

One lunchtime a small group of geese turn and cross the Greenway, solid and purposeful they head northeast at the remains of the valley. On another day two swans bloom themselves across the sky, wing flaps clearly audible. As January passes the calendar onto February and February passes it onto March and then to April, the shrubs play host to more and more birds. Their presence clearest between one and two o’clock, when the workers down tools and a certain quiet can settle in…Blackbirds sway higher up in the still bushes calling ‘sip’. Dunnock birds run in and out in twittering wave. A gang of feral pigeons rise and fall as people pass.

…In the borderlines, the displaced and the discarded have found their resting places. An Edwardian mirror—its glass held intact by a plaster surround that has yellowed like untended teeth. A leather football casts a long shadow in the January sun. A half-full bottle of Hi-Tech water, its label rises in the breeze. A green Christmas hat, glitter, fake fur trim, golden stars, and white pom pom. Broken prams. Plastic bags caught on barbed wire. Chipped garden gnomes and smashed mobile phones. Torched motorbikes. Food wrappers. Cigarette packets in various states of collapse. This is the likely litter of the liminal. The standard sweepings of the shoreline, of the lay by and of the train trackside. There are less expected finds, too. Huge circles of plastic tubing by the side of the path, like so many hoola hoops thrown in a hedge. Sections of cable, wire and metal. Empty sand bags and paint pots and spray cans. Sacks of woven plastic with looped handles ready for a forklift to take their strain. Overalls of different fabrics and different colours caught in different poses. From week to week, things change. New objects appear, old objects disappear, others moved around; one day by the canal, the next up by the railway bridge. Every now and then, Hi-vis jacketed workers sweep through the site with bin bags, removing what they can.

…Across the span of the site three colours prevail. There is the soil itself, in some places the soil is raised into huge earthworks flattened across the summit that flanks sloping down to ground level. In other places, there is digging down rather than piling up, great bowls carved out of the mud, their shapes rehearsals for what will eventually be concrete and steel, grass and cinder. On a wet day, the soil is the colour of cooking chocolate and glistens under the arc lights. When the sun is out, the earth pales to the hue of dry bark. And then there is the blue wall that skirts the site. The blue paint has found its way onto mud, onto the asphalt paths and has spattered the odd bush. There are discarded rubber gloves with blue marks and paint trays dyed the distinctive shade. The wall standing some 12 feet off the ground is said to extend for 11 miles. At the more visible points, the wall is adorned with rousing images of the sports to come, straining bodies, the camaraderie of the hug, high tech gear. Graffiti is noticeable by its absence.” (Carlyle, 2008)

Local histories

Local histories here are expressed through conversation snippets with passers-by and through the direct experience of the artists with the area. For Finer, construction at the site represented a tremendous loss of cultural heritage. At the bottom of his map for Sound Proof 1, he wrote: “Dedicated to the memory of The London Musician’s Collective, and all the other organizations whose funding has been diverted to the Olympic black hole.” (Finer, 2008) The London Musician’s Collective closed in 2008 after 33 years of activity. It was argued by the artist that funding was cut in favour of the Olympics.

Vessna Perunovich’s statement described her approach for the sound work she produced for the exhibition:  “Nine Stops to Stratford plays push and pull between past, present, and future, pondering on the transition of both space and time. The narration of Martin Richardson, a student/resident of East London in a radio ‘docu-drama’ style takes us on a journey destined to Stratford. Simultaneously nostalgic and forward-looking, the piece explores the positive and negative aspects of change.” (Perunovich, 2008)

The sound work, constructed as a series of nine stops on the London Underground en route to the Olympic site, began like this: 
“East London is really hard to reach anyway. East London, specially East Ham, where I visited and Bromley-by-Bow. You could definitely tell that it was a lot poorer. It wasn’t as rich, wasn’t the richest place to visit. I’ve witnessed about three or four crimes going on. There was a lot of police everywhere, really trying to keep everything under control. There was one lady who had her bag completely snatched off her arm, and the person ran down the street. Another person put their dog outside the shop and went into the shop and came out and the dog had been stolen. And this happened all in, like, the one day that I visited there. And so it gave me the impression that this wasn’t a nice place to be. It didn’t feel like a nice, close-knit community to live in.

…At one point we were walking down by the river. We were walking past a barbed wire fence and behind was just stacks full of rubber tyres; I think an old tyre yard. And then next to that was just a big pile of scrap metal. And we stopped there for a second and the guy said if you just look to your righthand side you’ll see the warm-up area for the athletes. Just stand there and imagine, in five years time a load of athletes warming up in this beautiful, brand new athletic stadium. It’s hard to imagine.

…There were a lot of really old brick buildings that you kind of thought, why, wow, I really don’t want to see them get demolished because that’s part of history. That’s where, you know, I think, a match company, where they make matches. I think it was something to do with that. And now it’s going to be demolished, and that was a big part of history and, it’s going to, imagine some 60-year old, 70-year old man who has lived in London all his life and used to work there as a boy, and he worked there all his life, and now he’s retired in the same area to see now where basically his whole life, his whole history is being demolished for this Olympics. I don’t know how that would feel.

…It would be an incredible thing to just walk out and witness this whole transformation…From walking through and seeing sort of scrapyards and rundown warehouses—abandoned warehouses—to, you know, and then seeing the transformation as to where it’s going to be and what it will be. I think the legacy it’s going to leave is opportunity.

…When I went there the other day, it just seemed like another suburb, not necessarily suburb, another Zone 3 town with a little mall and a little market, and maybe a cinema. Didn’t seem like anything different to anywhere else I’ve been outside of central London. Apart from the market, that was quite nice. I bought some nuts and some fruit and stuff on the way home, which was good to eat, but I really don’t think there’s any reason for anybody to go there. Afterwards, it’s definitely, definitely going to attract loads of different types of people.” (Perunovich, 2008)

Carlyle recorded bits of conversations he had with passers-by as part of his sound work, part reminiscence, part a sense of inevitability in the face of such tremendous change:
passer-by: I can remember when I was a little kid, when I was 10 years old, we used to cycle all along here and all around the marsh. It used to be spotless. We used to go fishing and then you see the rivers now, they’re just all clogged up, you know.
Angus: Well, the rubbish is amazing, isn’t it?
passer-by: Yeah, I really get annoyed about it. Yeah, I don’t want to get into it, it upsets me a little bit.
(Carlyle, 2008)

Socio-spatial information

The socio-spatial context of the site was most comprehensively interpreted by Colm Lally in the exhibition map produced for the exhibition. As he stated as a note in the map legend: “This map orientates a loose collection of thoughts surrounding Sound Proof. The intention is to create possibilities of movement between the curatorial text and the event.”

Having designed a visual map to denote the exhibition parameters, Lally used the symbolic markings employed in map making to identify the key concerns of Sound Proof 1. The following is from the exhibition map legend. 

In the score he wrote: “The arrangement of the works is temporal, allowing the sounds themselves to create the space of the show.” The horizon line was identified as “a threshold between the local site where the 2012 games will take place and the global zone of the Olympic Games.” The field contained: “Sound Proof conducts an artistic Ordnance Survey of the Olympic site, recording a set of alternative, independent observations.”

Distributaries were listed as a series of distributary thoughts on movement including: “tempospatial disorientation; crossing the logic of a map with the logic of a musical score; disruption of measurement; movement through an abstracted interstice; Olympic Games—‘celebration of humanity and universal moral principles’ >> the experience economy, event-based transformation/realisation; micro-migrations (Lower Lea Valley) >> re-placement by displacement; macro tension;  criminalisation of movement across actualised tempospatial boundaries; disobedience >> freedom of the multitude to speak and move” (Lally, 2008)

Miller and McAfee Press also used symbolic visual language to express the feeling of inevitability attached to events of such stature. Their map was composed of five horizontal lines drawn in different coloured markers, in the Olympic colours of red, green, black, yellow, blue. These were punctuated by dots in the same colour as the line and the colour of the next line, to represent the continuous movement from one Olympic event/activity to the next, year after year; like cogs in a machine. As they identified in their artist statement: “By turning the Olympic logo into a series of cogs, each one driving the next, The Miller and McAfee Press use the resulting mechanism as a sonic template for the work’s composition.” (Miller and McAfee Press, 2008)

Carlyle’s contribution to a sense of social and spatial orientation is founded on his observations of activity and ephemera encountered during his visits to the site. These seemingly inconsequential events and objects are plotted diagrammatically on his map as key markers of the site; giving prominence to the vernacular components of this site in transition. His approach echoes the notion that whoever maps the space gives that landscape and location its territorial characteristics, as his map foregrounds the liminal, the discarded, and the ephemeral qualities palpable for that moment in time. Here are the key markers identified by Carlyle, presented on the map with corresponding sound waves for each of the sounds: “Southend-Liverpool St. train passing at a distance; under the bridge; rain and trucks passing; dogs barking; dog owner talking; bicycle passing; cement works machinery; moorhens calling; feral pigeons taking flight; small jet circling; “dragon” at work demolishing last block of flats; blue and white striped plastic bag caught in barbed wire; helicopter circling; wind noise; distant siren; quiet lunchtime on The Greenway; workers cleaning rubbish; seagulls cawing; magpie chuckling; blackbird ‘seeping’.” (Carlyle, 2008)

The composition of Perunovich’s map is an outline of the site hand-drawn in a repeating continuous pattern of text, written over and over to create a finger print pattern in the shape of the Olympic site, spiralling inwards towards the centre of the site. In this way Perunovich expresses her own personal experience of the site on a palpable human scale. As she writes: “The map is a giant finger print composed of text in black ink which simply states: “It is something after all to take a blank on the map and build there a shining city.” (Perunovich, 2008)

Ownership and rights of access

Not very much is written directly about ownership and rights of access, except for Brown Sierra’s statement: “A blue wall separates the Olympic site from the rest of London. It follows and cuts off streets that previously ran through the site. The wall is punctuated by gateways, some busy and in constant use, others deserted.” (Brown Sierra, 2008) Certainly Finer had strong views against cordoning off the area with a massive wall, yet his concerns felt wider and related more to government policy regarding arts funding and the Olympic project as a whole.

Brown Sierra took the lack of access to the interior of the site as an opportunity to experiment and play with the notion of periphery: “For us the most interesting thing was the perimeter. This became our territory. Techniques we employed to map the Perimeter. Use public telephone boxes as recording device. Map all the telephone boxes in the area of the perimeter. Put in the minimum amount of money. Stick receiver out of the booth. Phone home, record onto answering machine. Parallax Recordings. Make a simultaneous mono recording travelling in opposite directions around the whole site.

Collect broken tape cassettes from along the route, make into tape loops. Record the gateways. Stand either side of entrance make a recording. Mark the route and all finds on the map. The Parallax site recording becomes an audio map. We place the gateways, tape loops, and public telephone boxes into the route as they are passed.” (Brown Sierra, 2008)

Cultural understandings of the environment

In terms of understanding the site through its cultural significance—what Strang refers to as ‘religious and secular understandings’—there were two commissions that made big statements in that regard, both quite distrustful of the Olympic project and its political and social connotations. Finer stated: “On the inside, cocooned in a mini bus, one passes through a landscape of earthen mounds and broken buildings, accompanied by the babble of Olympic double speak…From the rubble of the Hackney Wick/Stratford interzone rises the Olympic State; parasitic, contaminated, banal.” (Finer, 2008)

Sara Heitlinger and Franc Purg fashion a visual language of totalitarian utopia in their map. Dissected into four parts, the plane of the map is composed of scenes set in idealised artist’s renditions of the future site at Stratford, taken from the London 2012 website, as backgrounds for illustrations of Stalin and Mao Ze Dong from their respective propaganda posters. The link is made by the artists between the Olympics and autocratic regimes: “What does the Olympics committee fear? Is it an accident that these images use the visual language of totalitarian propaganda? Throughout history, the base for totalitarian systems is fear. This project explores the fears of our society.” (Heitlinger and Purg, 2008)

Through the gentle musings of her narrator, Perunovich provides us with a different perspective on the immensity of the event to come and its effect on people’s everyday lives:
“I think that the Olympics is definitely, it’s a time where everybody sort of gets together and forgets about everything and they just concentrate on this fantastic, you know, one of the oldest sports events in the world is coming to my doorstep. I mean, how incredible is that, if you live just one mile away from the stadium where the best athletes in the world are competing for the number one spot. This is probably the biggest Olympics project ever, you know, in terms of having the facilities for it. We’re really having to dig deep and create something that’s going to be hopefully memorable to a lot of people in their lives. And, definitely, I’m definitely going to remember it for the rest of my life. I’m hopefully going to be there in the crowd. Don’t know how much it’s going to cost me to get a ticket, but I’m definitely, definitely going to go along.

…I know when I was younger and I went to watch the Nottingham Tennis Open, and I used to play tennis on some really old horrible courts at school, with, like, ripped nets, and they were too low and I went to Nottingham Open and saw these amazingly well-kept grass lawns with brass. You know, everything was all shiny, and nice, and wooden and looked amazing. Wow, I really want to play on that court. So imagine a kid walking past and seeing, like, a brand-new football pitch. And he loves football more than anything in the whole wide world and all he wants to do is get on that pitch and play football. That’s definitely going to make them want to play.” (Perunovich, 2008)

Resource use and management

In terms of use and management of resources, most artists commented on the wall around the site and its pronounced demarcation from the surrounding landscape and the adjoining communities; namely, Finer, Brown Sierra, and Carlyle. But it was Heitlinger and Purg who stated this as a political imperative: “Today the Olympic site is made practically inaccessible to the London public by a blue wall. At strategic points, the hoardings show images of the projected site in 2012: a beautiful village with happy families, athletes, and plenty of nature. But each day the wall is painted the exact same shade of blue in order to remove graffiti that challenges this ideal.” (Heitlinger and Purg, 2008)

Concerns for the existing ecosystem of the site were voiced by Carlyle, through a deliberate identification of bird populations at the time he visited the site. Moorhens, robins, seagulls, magpies, blackbirds, coots, herring gulls, feral pigeons, geese, swans, and blackbirds were all identified as present at the site. (Carlyle, 2008)

Through her narrator, Perunovich expressed hopes that the wildlife ecosystem would be restored post-Olympics to the betterment of the surrounding communities: “There was a lot of wildlife. And a lot of people, a lot of concerns from specially the girls on my course. Oh, what about the swans and the birds and all that sort of stuff…They were transporting as many of them, obviously if they come across them, to another place further up in North London. So, I’m guessing that it’s going to be, that it’s gonna have to be some sort of relaxation parks and wildlife areas, so that it can attract all these sorts of things back when they finished it. So, I’m guessing, besides all the stadiums and courts and things they’re building, there’s going to be a few more nice places for people to go.” (Perunovich, 2008)

Conclusion

In his exploration of an evolving conception of heritage, Paul Claval finds "new values and meanings are now being ascribed to particular landscapes, many of which previously were not considered of particular significance." (Claval, 2007, p.88) Sound Proof 1 and other projects that emerged as the Stratford site gained its Olympic designation provided alternative perspectives on the site's significance, allowing for a wider set of meanings and values to be attached to the location. As evidenced by the work of Brown Sierra, Carlyle and Perunovich, this did not necessarily mean an oppositional stance against the Games. But what their work did was widen the scope of interest to include the vernacular, the ephemeral and the discarded as positive reflections of the site at a key moment in its transition, preserving their memory for future reference in the form of soundscapes and maps. Finer, Heitlinger and Purg, and Miller and McAfee Press took a wider view across time and space to comment on the Olympic project as a whole. For artists aiming to make definitive statements that contradict the official cannon, projects like Sound Proof function as platforms that allow their expression. 

Mapping the exhibition’s cultural value in terms of topographic and ecological information, local histories, social/spatial information, ownership and rights of access, cultural understandings of the site, and resource use and management reveals the contributions made by the Sound Proof 1 artists to commemorate the site on the eve of construction and leave a record for future reference post-Olympics. For the individuals encountering the works in Sound Proof 1, this means that the site can be appreciated on the very human everyday scale of musings, observations, and casual conversations and as part of a larger debate on the role of events of worldwide stature to sustain cultures, communities, and ecosystems.

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References

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Carlyle, A. (2008).  51º 32’ 6.954”N/0º 00’ 47.0808W (sound work, map and artist statement). In Sound Proof 1 multiple. Folio of maps and audio CD with exhibition catalogue/map. London: Colm Lally and Monica Biagioli.

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Heitlinger, S. and Purg, F. (2008). What is it that moves us? (map and artist statement). In Sound Proof 1 multiple. Folio of maps and audio CD with exhibition catalogue/map. London: Colm Lally and Monica Biagioli.

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Lally, C. and Biagioli, M. (2008). Curatorial statement. In Sound Proof 1 multiple. Folio of maps and audio CD with exhibition catalogue/map. London: Colm Lally and Monica Biagioli.

Perunovich, V. in collaboration with Vasic, B. (2008). Nine stops to Stratford (sound work, map and artist statement). In Sound Proof 1 multiple. Folio of maps and audio CD with exhibition catalogue/map. London: Colm Lally and Monica Biagioli.

Strang, V. (2010). Mapping histories: cultural landscapes and walkabout methods. In Vaccaro, Smith, Aswani (eds.), Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Endnote

There were many key contributors to the project, including partners, collaborators and supporters. They included: Brian Reed, Colm Lally, E:vent Gallery, Teal Triggs, Information Environments Research Unit, Sabine Unamun, Arts Council of England, Catherine Souch, Royal Geographical Society, Yussef Ali, St Katharine & Shadwell Trust, Colin Davies, Monika Parrinder, Limited Language, Tara Cranswick, Catherine Sellars, Hilary Best, Workspace Group, London College of Communication, Sophie Perkins, Hackney Museum, Dimitrios Tourountsis, Mapping the Change, Marcia Charles, Homerton Library, Cheryl Bowen, Julie Penfold, LabCulture, B-side Multimedia Arts Festival, Ariadna Pons, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Richard Thomas, Resonance FM, Siân Cook, Isaac Marrero-Guillamón, Irini Papadimitriou, and the artists who contributed works as part of the commissions, and the many people who came along to support the project along the way.