Of This Parish

Bells have had a central role in the formation and solidification of communities. The idea of a ‘Parish’ – a common device used to delineate territory while also defining a sacred community – was an articulation of acoustic space: the Parish was the zone in which a church bell could be heard.

This notion of ‘Parish’ as phonosphere is the point of departure in a piece which explores the relationship between acoustic spaces: the personal and the shared, the secular and the sacred, the near and the distant, the historical and the contemporary.

In the piece, four walks are made simultaneously by four synchronized sound recordists, all starting from the central location of a Church with a tolling bell.
When the recordings are played through four corresponding pairs of loudspeakers arranged around the perimeter of an installation space, the recordings would begin with this integrated 8-channel surround recording; each recording rendering the acoustic scene from an only marginally different perspective to the others. However, as the recordists begin along their respective walks, only sounds loud enough to permeate each local environment – such as the church bell – would permeate all four recordings

The rationale for the presentation of these four recordings in a single space is to provide the listener with an impossible listening experience, collapsing the entire acoustic territory of the Parish into its epicentre; the church that defines it.