This was my first sustained return to praxis, having been a more ‘traditional’ academic, focusing on research projects and articles. For this project I recorded the underwater sounds of the river Shannon over a calendar year, using a stereo pair of hydrophones. The project questions issues of alienation from nature, reification of it, and the role of praxis in dealing with issues of ecosystem distress. The piece consists of twelve multitrack recordings, minimally processed in post.

Sometimes the underwater sounds come through at such low gain that multiple passes at noise reduction and normalisation were done. Some layering was done to help with amplification. Otherwise I preferred to not over-treat the sounds because I wished to retain as much authenticity from what I found. I also wrote a journal article about this piece which you can read here.