Less than 12 hours after the snow storm on Thursday, December 11, 2014; I travelled to the Hermitage Ruins in Ancaster, Ontario to record the sounds of the landscape. I was amazed to discover the amount of people who had already visited the mansion. Quite surprising given that I was at the Hermitage by 10 am on Friday (a work day for most people).
My goal for this visit and future visits to other architecture significant buildings is to document their sounds. Do particularly buildings have unique sound characteristics?
I was very surprised by the amount of human noise at the Hermitage. The following sound clip is a mixture of sounds captured at the Hermitage.
When the humans disappear the landscapes come alive with animal sounds. In this recording, squires and woodpeckers being the chief noise makers. Crows, however, always liked to get their two cents into any landscape conversation (smile).
This was my first real attempt at capturing landscape sounds with my Zoom H4n field recorder and pair of Rode M5 mini shotgun mics. The goal is to capture the unique sound qualities of each rural and urban landscape in the Hamilton area. As I gain more experience, I hope to create richer and fuller sound narratives of each building and its landscape.
Thanks for listening.
Chris Erskine
chriserskineartist@gmail.com
@erskinec
FCSD Studio 