Environmental Sound Feed (>10 years)

Commissioned by University of Leeds

Gair Wood Sounds is a long-term live sound installation and broadcast system situated within Gair Wood, a designated “living lab” for ecological research. Structured over a ten-year period, the work establishes a continuous environmental audio stream, capturing and transmitting the sonic conditions of the woodland in real time.

Using a solar-powered stereo microphone system, designed and built by Soundcamp, dawn and dusk choruses are recored for the duration of the project. Over time, this produces an expanding archive that traces seasonal variation and longer-term environmental change. Rather than presenting a fixed work, the project sets up an infrastructure for listening that unfolds over an extended duration.

At its centre is a question: what is this stream for, and how might it be listened to? The work operates as an infrastructure for new forms of practice, pedagogy and research, inviting diverse modes of engagement with the stream in real time and with recorded material as it accumulates.

A listenership is central to this process. Through sustained exposure and repeated return, the work explores how listening might develop over time, and how attention to environmental sound can be shaped, shared and maintained across an extended temporal frame.