Moving away from Hilly fields

Following feedback from my tutor, I have started to rethink the direction of my portfolio project. My original idea focused on returning to Hilly Fields and comparing the sounds I remembered with the sounds I could record in the present. Although I was interested in the relationship between sound and memory, I began to feel that focusing on one location made the project too easy to compare. I wanted to explore something more personal and give myself more freedom to experiment with sound.

I have realised that Hilly Fields is not necessarily special because of its individual soundscape. Instead, it is part of a wider connection I have with parks across London. Growing up in the Nottingham countryside has influenced the way I experience green spaces. Living in a busy city, I often find that parks give me somewhere to slow down, listen and feel comfortable. Being surrounded by trees, hearing birds and wind and experiencing a sense of openness can remind me of home, even though the environment is very different from the one I grew up in.

This has lead me to think about whether the feeling of home comes from particular sounds or from the memories and associations I bring to them. I am interested in how an environment can evoke a sense of familiarity without necessarily sounding exactly like somewhere I remember.

Steven Feld: Hiroshima, the Last Sound

I looked into Steven Feld’s Hiroshima, the Last Sound, which has encouraged me to think differently about how sound can connect the present with the past.

Feld is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist shoes work explores the relationship between sound, listening, place and culture. In Hiroshima, the Last Sound, he reflects on hearing the peace bell and cicadas in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. These present-day sounds prompted him to imagine the sonic experiences associated with the atomic bombing go Hiroshima. He recorded the bell and cicadas and combined the sounds in a composition that connects his experience of the present with his reflections on the past.

What interests me about this work is how ordinary sounds can become connected to something beyond the moment in which they are heard. The bell and cicadas are part of Feld’s immediate environment but through memory, imagination and composition they take on additional significance on time, absence and the relationship between past and present.

Although Feld’s work engages with a specific historical tragedy, my project would explore a different kind of relationship with the past. I am interested in personal memory and the feeling of belonging associated with growing up in the countryside. However, his approach has made me consider how I might use sounds from my present environment to explore experiences that are no longer immediately accessible to me.

Connecting Sound, Memory and Home

Thinking about Feld’s work has encouraged me to move away from trying to recreate a particular remembered location. Instead, I want to investigate how sounds in London parks connect me to my childhood in Nottingham.

For example, the sound of birds in a London park might be similar to something I remember from growing up in the countryside. However, I do not necessarily need to hear the exact same sound for it to evoke a feeling of familiarity. The combination of natural sounds, open space and distant background noise might be enough to remind me of being somewhere quieter.

I am particularly interested in the relationship between these natural sounds and the noise of the city. When I sit in a London park, the distant hum of traffic can become part of the environment rather than something I actively notice. The park provides a sense of separation from the city, even though the city remains acoustically present. I want to explore whether this combination of sounds contributes to the feeling of calm and familiarity that I associate with these spaces.

This raises questions about how we listen to environments and how our personal histories influence what we hear. A recording of a park might sound ordinary to someone else, while for me it could evoke a memory or a feeling of home. I am interested in this difference between the sound itself and the associates I bring to it.

Developing the practical work

My next step is to begin recording different parks around London rather than concentrating exclusively on Hilly Fields. I want to collect a range of sounds, including birds, wind, footsteps, people in the distance and the underlying noise of the city, Alongside these recordings, I will reflect on my childhood memories of Nottingham countryside and identify the sounds and feelings I associate with home.

I then want to experiment with bringing these two environments together through sound composition. Using Ableton, I could layer recording, manipulate their textures, stretch sounds over time and alter their spatial qualities. I am interested in whether these processes can communicate the relationship between my present environment and my memories without attempting to reproduce either place accurately.

Rather than deciding on a finished piece too early, I want these experiments to help me discover what the work is really about. The recordings will become material for exploration, allowing me to investigate the relationship between sound memory and emotional experience throughout the process of making.

research question

My current research question is:

How can the sounds of onions parks evoke a sense of home connected to my childhood in the Nottingham countryside?

Through this project, I hope to understand how the sounds of my present environment can become connected to memories of somewhere else. Feld’s work has helped me recognise that sound can carry associations beyond its immediate surroundings and I want to explore this idea through my own listening experience and compositions.

Ultimately, I am interested in creating a piece that explores what it means to feel at home in a place that is not home. rather than simply recording what to feel at home in a place that is not home. Rather than simply recording what a park sounds like, I want to investigate how I experience it, what it reminds me of and how sound can express the connection between the environment around me and the memories I carry with me.