By Aileen Ogilvie
(MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology graduate)
A week-long “Rousaydency” – exploring place, time and archaeological practice through sound – was a chance to develop my own practice as an artist researcher and work collaboratively with fellow sound artist and archaeologist Lara Band.
Although we set out to think about sound, we fully immersed ourselves in place by getting down in the trenches and carrying out a fair amount of wall chasing.
A tiny test pit, named Trench 20B, became the focus of our attention for the first few days on site. The process of excavation can produce similar feelings and experiences to those that surface during the creative process of songwriting and making! After hours of digging through many layers of false hope, stubborn long stones and frustration we finally got through to shillet and uncovered a continuation of the wall found in Trench 20.
While we discussed the scale of the structure and questioned its relationship with the Norse hall, I thought about the intangible cultural heritage of the site and the links to the Orkneyinga saga. Who was Sigurd of Westness, a powerful chieftain and character in the saga, and how could I represent the spirit of his existence and the other voices that may have inhabited this space in sound?
Throughout the week I made several audio recordings on site, using a combination of a handheld Tascam recorder and my iPhone Voice Note Recorder.
I captured the sounds of the site first thing in the morning before the team arrived to get to work for the day, the sounds of a working archaeology dig during the day and the sounds of place after everyone had packed up for the day.
I documented the key soundmarks of Skaill Farm in the present and reimagined the sounds of the past taking inspiration from artefact finds such as animal bone, pottery, whetstones and glass.
A key sound mark of Skaill Farm as a working dig site was the futuristic “bleep beep” of the Trimble GNSS as different members of the team used it to measure and record location of the trenches and finds.
The tools used to carry out the excavation provided a backing track of scrapes and scratches with occasional beat changes as mattocks and shovels broke through the earth.
I made sure to record these sounds and Lara placed contact mics on the tools to get an aural close up of the process. The surrounding landscape, seascape and local seal colony provided further sonic inspiration.
Combining a cacophony of found sounds and playing with voice I created a response to place in the form of a sound artefact punctuated by the sounds of the Trimble in intervals representing the measurements taken of the trenches.
The track with the working title of Sigurd? was then played back via a speaker inside Trench 20B to form site specific sound installation on the Open Day on Saturday, July 20.
As the end of the week drew nearer, Lara and I asked everyone working on site to tell us their key soundmarks of Skaill Farm. From the sounds of birds, to the sounds of children singing and the sound of frantically exhaling to get rid of the clegs/horseflies, we gathered these and used them as a starting point for a workshop activity on the open day.
Visitors were invited to participate in an activity where they were asked to think about a sound they associated with the site, write it on a stone from the rubble pile excavated from the trenches and place it among other stones gathered to form a Sound Wall. The Sound Wall grew throughout the day and so did the conversation on the role sound plays in our daily lives.
As our final day on site was drawing to a close, it was time to fill in Trench 20B, the sound wall provided a tangible way to document the intangible and developed into a spoken word performance. The stones from the wall were placed in the trench for archaeologists of the future to find.
Studying an MA in Contemporary Art & Archaeology with UHI Orkney has brought many exciting opportunities and heading over to Rousay for a week on the Skaill Farm dig has been one of the highlights!
Aileen is a graduate from the MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology course, to find out more click here.
