Hark  is a collaborative installation, combining soundscapes and animated macro-photographic images. David Cottridge’s photographs explore the texture, colour and form of tree bark, lichens and mosses through a series of large scale macroscopic photographs. The images have been digitally composited and then animated, allowing for the fine detail of the subject to be viewed more intently.  Through this process the images begin to transcend their origins, suggesting new landscapes and creating a disconcerting sense of scale and perspective for the viewer. The majority of the images were captured in Gunpowder Park in the woodlands known as the ‘Salix’ and show the intricate surfaces and sometimes complex ecosystems of the Willow, Grey Poplar and Silver Birch. David Chapman has collected a series of bio-acoustic and environmental recordings from Gunpowder Park or sites nearby. These include the sounds of watercourses, sub-aquatic insects, echolocation sounds of bats, bird wing-beats, the intimacy of swans breathing, the movements of foliage, and the acoustic effects of the weather. These recordings are used as the source material for the composition of a number of powerful soundscapes, shaped through digital processing and presented via ‘surround sound’ technology. The combination of the images and the sound explore both the subjective relations between the two elements and the use of the images as a form of ‘graphic score’ for the compositions. The audio responds to the textures, shapes and patterns within the images, triggering sounds which have some form of associational connection or creating sometimes paradoxical relationships between what we see and what we hear.

Hark was exhibited at Gunpowder Park, Waltham Abbey, October 2005.
It was subsequently shown at:Sound:Space festival, Digital Media Centre, South Hill Park, Bracknell, January 2007
V&A Museum, London, as part of Tottenham Takeover, March, 2014