THE MACHINIC COAST
THE MACHANIC COAST
Mapping The Exterior is an audio-visual documentation of the Tata Steel site taken in February 2024, where the sounds of the coke ovens, steam cinches and blast furnaces were recorded shortly before their closure.
The Process
As an album that addresses both the immediacy of Tata Steel's closures whilst also exploring the complex question of human creation and emerging techology, it was decided early on that the sound of the steelworks would be crucial in constructing an a sense of identity and place within the sonic landscape.
Beginning as a project where field recordings recorded at the site were experimeinted with through granular synthesis, the result of re-listening and hearing new phrases from the machines began to resemble a kind of ghost from a future that never quite materialised.
In February 2024, Kieran went to the Port Talbot site and documented the sounds of the blast furnaces, coke ovens and other operational plants, all of which as of July 2024 have now permanently closed.
Reflecting on these closures and this epoch in the history of Welsh steel manufacturing where the subsequent loss of industry, identity and economic opportunity is felt deeply in Port Talbot, came the question of what this shift in labour being outsourced to electronic and technological systems might mean for the future.
The looming spectres of technology and A.I replacing roles previously upheld by humans has been the topic of discourse for decades, however as we progress further into the 21st century it seems that this once hypothetical notion is becoming a rapid reality amongst various local and global industries.
To work toward exploring this question of humans and technology in the future of the 21st century, it was decided that a musical language would need to be established to explore a topic which invokes an array of responses such as mourning, melancholia and the realisation of lost futures. Therefore, the instrumentation and textural approach revolved around a dialogue between the organic and the synthesised - the orchestra and the electronics, the human and the machine.
Not in competition, but rather an exchange between the two worlds in an attempt to explore a symbiotic origin between the two languages.
The use of field recordings within composition has been a method used by artists and musicians to offer a deeper level of immersion in electro-acoustic music, beginning with Studio D'Essai, Pierre Schaeffer and music concrete' movement that followed in the 1950's.
For this album, whilst using field sounds as signifyers for place and time, the recordings were also exposed to additional experimental techniques and manipulation to create new meanings and applications for them that may offer alternate insights and approaches to creation.
This was largely explored through the idea of granular synthesis as a compositional tool, where the grains of sound which are recalled and echoed can be extremely imaginative for evoking memory, history and a blur between past, present and future.