Sound Map | Craig Gell

Entrenched

An interactive sound map of room-tone recordings made inside a selection of WWII ‘pillbox’ defences located around Folkestone town. Created in response to the Sound Diaries 2024 Open Call supported by the Sonic Art Research Unit (SARU), Oxford Brookes University.

These reinforced concrete chambers, commissioned in 1940 to defend against invasion, remain embedded in the landscape, obsolete but perhaps still sentinel. The field recordings explore the variation in their design and acoustic character, while capturing the contemporary acoustic environment from their militaristic vantage point.

GO TO THE MAP

Lithoscapes

Lithoscapes is a library of acoustical Impulse Response recordings made at a number of important geological sites found within the Kent Downs AONB. At each location a sound recording was made of a balloon being popped. This sonic information is processed to create a reverb effect, encapsulating the acoustic space, so that it can be reproduced when applied to other sounds. The web app allows the user to compose patterns of sound and play them into their chosen lithoscape.

LAUNCH APP*

_{*Headphones recommended}

Pent Happenings

In response to the question “What’s happening, exactly?” posed by Folkestone Fringe, and as part of the MagiC Carpets platform, Pent Happenings comprises a series of audio-visual artworks, workshops and events drawing on field studies, geo-scientific data and research concerning Folkestone’s Pent stream and its environs.

Folkestone’s El Dorado: An auditory ramble through The Warren

El Dorado is a triptych of soundscapes that combine original music and field recordings capturing the unique sounds and biodiversity of Folkestone Warren: a designated local nature reserve (LNR) and site of special scientific interest (SSSI).

“The Warren has been termed the El Dorado and the “terra felix” of the entomologists. And not without reason.”
– Rambles Around Folkestone by “Felix”, 1913

The field recordings were made along three routes, and over three consecutive mornings in the first week of July 2018, between 4am and 7am, during the dawn chorus when the avian inhabitants of The Warren are at their most vocal.