Hold & Release
Hold & Release
Below the Blanket
Hold and Release are two outdoor sonic artpieces commissioned by Cryptic as part of Below the Blanket, a walking meditation through art inspired by one of Scotland’s great wild landscapes…
Marking twenty-five years of ‘ravishing the senses’, Cryptic presents Below the Blanket, a series of new artworks installed throughout the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and inspired by one of Scotland’s most extraordinary and unsung natural features.
The Flow Country is the world’s largest blanket bog, a vast mass of peat and Sphagnum moss, shot through with hundreds of lochs, that covers 200,000 hectares in Caithness and Sutherland. Home to many rare animals, birds, insects and plants, the peat also acts as a natural store for carbon, helping to offset the effects of climate change.
Hold
We increasingly understand that even moderate human activity can have major consequences on the environment, as it has in the Flow Country. In this work, too, small interventions generate an immediate response: as they explore, visitors trigger ultrasonic sensors that cause the soundscape – remixed and reworked from audio recordings made in the Flow Country – to drop in pitch. Hold lets us hear how it might feel to have our feet sunk into the peat bog, and reminds us that human activity affects our environment constantly and often invisibly.
Release
Throughout the Flow Country, parts of the vast peatland bog ‘breathe’ in different ways, depending on the rise and fall of water levels and the health of the moss and peat. Using data gathered over 18 months in the Flow Country, Release lets us hear these variations over time as we make our way through the maze. Each area studied has been interpreted as a different percussion track, whose rhythm alters according to the changes in water levels recorded there. These voices follow us through the maze, reminding us of the complex interplay of human and environmental factors that shape every natural landscape. Featuring sampled cymbals performed by drummer Ben Collard.
With thanks to: Kathy Hinde, Dr Chris Marshall (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Nottingham), Matthew Olden, Yann Seznec, Ben Collard, Cryptic, Tinderbox Collective, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, RSPB Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage, The Highland Council, Environmental Research Institute, The Flow Country, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Creative Scotland, PRS for Music Foundation Talent Development Partnership & The Old Curiosity.
Read more about Below the Blanket here and here.
