{"id":205,"date":"2008-08-26T14:03:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T14:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=205"},"modified":"2008-09-10T08:13:59","modified_gmt":"2008-09-10T08:13:59","slug":"the-textures-of-napoli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=205","title":{"rendered":"The textures of Napoli…"},"content":{"rendered":"

A different language is a different reality; what is the language, the world, of stones? What is the language, the world, of birds? Of atoms? Of microbes? Of air?<\/p>\n

– Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects<\/span><\/p>\n

The images, interviews and sound clips that I collect will sound foreign; it’s noisy here, it’s big, and I think truly fascinating, but it is really quite different from the UK. The problem is that my mundane is exotic to a UK audience; the quantities, the colours, the voices.<\/p>\n

– Claudia Figueiredo, Mundane Appreciation, corresponding about the Fantastical Reality Radio Show<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know how you experience foreign landscapes, but I experience different places mostly in terms of new textures. For starters, the language spoken in a country foreign to me is a sonic texture that differs enormously from what I know, from what is familiar. We had to talk about this during the Fantastical Reality Radio Show because of the way that Mexico – where Claudia lives – is so different in its sonic ‘feeling’ to England. Shaping my mouth to make new sounds puts the taste of a new place into my mouth in a way that even the food cannot. The soundscape aside, the Earth smells different depending on where you are on it.<\/p>\n

My sense of place is comprised mostly of sensory details. The landscape and the way history has shaped it are as evident in tiny areas as in sweeping overviews.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Crumbling painted plaster at Pompeii<\/a>
\n<\/span>
\nI am often overwhelmed by vast panoramic views of entirely foreign landscapes, and so tend to break these up into small and manageable areas of focus. I love how looking at a small area of detail can help me to understand how the place I am visiting differs from my homeground. When I am away from England, I notice things like the way the bricks are laid, the textures formed on the soil or in the rock and what I will mostly notice and photograph, are surfaces that I haven’t seen before.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The inside of the crater at Vesuvius<\/a>, still an active volcano<\/span><\/p>\n

I wonder how much this sensual preoccupation with places has something to do with being a knitter and a sound-recordist? It is certainly difficult for me to go anywhere without imagining how the things I see could be translated into stitch patterns.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Roman brickwork at the Amphitheatre at Pozzuoli<\/span><\/p>\n

And when I listen back to recordings I have made, I am always struck by how the surfaces and the sounds of the spaces where the recordings were made are faithfully preserved by the sounds within the recording. I didn’t manage to do a whole lot of recording while I was in Italy, but I did record the toaster in the breakfast buffet bar and I did record the the hiss of steam rising out of a very sulphurous hole in the ground at Solfatara.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Solfatara, Pozzuoli, Italy<\/span><\/p>\n

The lovely Caroline wrote me a beautiful letter about sound – which was definitely in one of the scripts I wrote for the show, if not in the final version of that show – which I’ll quote here as it really sums up for me what sound recordings of place are like, in terms of their ability to document and evoke.<\/p>\n

It was also nice to get out the minidisk and go through some old recordings\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6of buskers on a tram, priests in St Peter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Rome singing, kids in the warehouse singing ABC all wrong, accordion tunes with someone cooking dinner in the background, morrocan musicians at a party, someone snoring through the same party, a dog panting, me whistling mac the knife while clearing up the kitchen\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all so evocative, brings me right back to where each one was made. I can see in my mind the light in the square in Rome in the evening, from hearing a tree full of birds five or six years later. They all mean something to me, but not much to anyone else. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like an audio diary. Beautiful.-Caroline, artist, recordist, beloved friend<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the sounds of a place are almost like a texture, for me. This is an idea I will be exploring further in my PhD this year… the materiality of sound or the way that I think of sound as being like a fabric that you can collect and use to make something else.<\/p>\n

Then there is the way that knitting encourages a tactile relationship with places.<\/p>\n

The way that, when you look at the lush forests covering fertile volcanic rock, you see a green sweater or a skein of dyed yarn in deep greys and verdant, leafy shades.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nThe lush green forests covering the sides of Vesuvius<\/span><\/p>\n

Or the curious way that you instantly interpret the ‘Roman’ qualities of a broken column as a texture, rather than as a structural shape.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…there were so many different textures in Napoli.<\/p>\n

Hot, urban textures… a patina of graffiti overlaying modern brickwork…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nGraffiti on the walls at Pozzuoli train station<\/span><\/p>\n

…so different from the ancient, painted surfaces of ochre and umber, preserved under volcanic ash for so long out at Pompeii…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…or the naked, Roman bricks on the walls of the Amphitheatre at Pozzuoli.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Different again, were the bricks built up around the rising steam at Solfatara, for Sauna or health-giving purposes. Look at the way the hot, volcano-heated water rising out of the earth has coated these bricks in Sulphur crystals:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The purpose-built sauna space at Solfatara<\/span><\/p>\n

The heat in Napoli was one of the main differences, for me, between here and there. I am not used (or suited!) to so much sun. A landscape shaped by volcanic activity and full of thermal baths and spas is very exotic to me, though. I was especially excited by all the volcanic surfaces of Solfatara and Vesuvius…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sulphur crystals at Sulfatara<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Arid growth on the white, sandy slopes inside the volcanic crater at Sulfatara<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nRocky surfaces and layers of strata inside the crater at Vesuvius<\/span><\/p>\n

Burned on my mind after the trip are impressions of heat and dazzling sunlight. We stayed in a corner of the earth that is vibrantly yellow, ochre, white, green, grey and earthy in its colours – and in its foods.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nDried edibles in Ischia<\/span><\/p>\n

Luckily, relief from some of the more scorching surfaces and temperatures was provided by the beautiful lemons and the soft blue waters of the Ocean.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Lemon-tastic porcelain on the Island of Ischia<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Boats at the bay of Ischia<\/span><\/p>\n

Locations, dates, facts and panoramic views to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A different language is a different reality; what is the language, the world, of stones? What is the language, the world, of birds? Of atoms? Of microbes? Of air? – Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects The images, interviews and sound clips that I collect will sound foreign; it’s noisy here, it’s big, and I think truly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[635,637,636],"tags":[672,671,665,668,666,670,669,667],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-making","category-valuing-reality","tag-672","tag-inspiration","tag-ischia","tag-napoli","tag-pompeii","tag-senses","tag-textures","tag-vesuvius"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pmise-3j","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}