I am so excited for her lecture because recently I’m reading the book In The Field by her and Angus Carlyle. I’m interested in field recording which Cathy is one of the expert in this area. I’m also curios about her approach to field recording because her book didn’t talk much about themself.
One of her work call:The Hebrides Suite: mapping the islands in sound at Museum nan Eilean, Isle of Benbecula, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. This project investigate human activity in the past and present in the certain places which is the island in Scotland. Can we trace the history sonically and how the past affect the present sonic environment. She went to field recoding in the Island as well as doing workshop with the students in Caitriona and Lisa from Museum nan Eilean, and asking them to interview their parents or grand parents about the story of places.
The most interesting point that Cathy said during the lecture was the function of field recording. She said field recording have the function of documentary which for me, I haven’t think about it as documentary. For me, field recording is gathering sounds from the outside and that contrasting the conventional way to create composition. I am not sitting in the room to create sounds by using instruments. I am gathering the excessing sounds and manipulating those sounds. This way, I think it is more organic and the idea of the ‘normal’ everyday sounds can be interesting which depends how to listen them.