Albert Road Artist Residency: Voices of the Avon Tideway, Dan Pollard

One of the largest tides on Earth flows into Bristol twice a day. It is easy to live here and barely notice the twelve-hour surge of the North Atlantic Ocean, but for the birdlife of the city it creates a constantly shifting ecosystem with new opportunities and challenges at every stage of the tide.

None of this happens silently. As these birds follow their food upriver or retreat from flooding mudflats, they add their voices to the city's soundscape.

Human lives move in counterpoint to this immense, slow pulse of nature. Our voices reflect off concrete and glass, echo through underpasses, and multiply via unintended quirks of architecture. The city’s acoustic ecology shapes how we move, communicate, and listen.

This project tunes into the rich chorus of these voices and the acoustic spaces they share. It will explore Bristol’s most interesting soundscapes and ask what we can learn from them, particularly for those who rely on sound to navigate the city.

As an artistic response, spatially choreographed compositions for human voices will be developed. Drawing inspiration from birdsong and ecological time, these works will emerge from and move through their surroundings, shaped by practices of embodied listening and sighted guiding.  

This research will also inform the design of a permanent public artwork on the banks of the tidal Avon. 

An acoustic sculpture that generates no sound, but reflects what it hears.

Always listening and inviting us to do the same.

High Tide Dawn Chorus recordings - with Ellie Williams

On Monday 30 March, at high tide, Dan Pollard joined Ellie Williams to record the dawn chorus along the banks of the Avon at 40-46 Albert Rd.

As the city woke up, they captured the sounds of Wrens, Magpies, Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps, Moorhens, Gulls and Willow Warblers. They also heard runners, cyclists, traffic and trains. This combined chorus revealed the reverbs, reflections and echoes of the tidal river valley. These acoustic spaces have been formed by the flow of the river, as well as the urban development and industrial history of the site.

Photography courtesy of Dan Pollard

Footbridge explorations - with Holly Thomas and Will Goodchild

Visits to the site with collaborators Holly Thomas and Will Goodchild have revealed further acoustic characteristics of the location. The footbridge over the river has some particularly interesting, and presumably accidental, sonic features.

Clapping at particular points on the bridge produces echoes which whoosh and bend, sometimes sounding like bird cheeps or water drips. They also found two rows of drain pipes, pointing down towards the river, which produce resonant pitches when played percussively and amplify any sounds that are played into them.

vox experiments on the bridge - with Ellian Showering

Events

Team

Dan Pollard - Lead Artist

Holly Thomas - Choreographer, Embodied Listening and Accessibility Specialist

William Goodchild - Orchestrator and Conductor

Ellian Showering - Vocalist

Ellie Williams - Wildlife Sound Recordist

This commission is produced by Ginkgo Projects on behalf of Deeley Freed, the project funders.

About Dan Pollard

Dan Pollard is a composer, sound designer, instrument builder and artist. He specialises in using novel and unusual sound sources and has made music and instruments from The BBC Natural History Unit’s sound archive, the chimpanzees of Ngogo, hospital equipment, the city of Liverpool, a Scottish Loch, the Amazon rainforest and much more.

As a Bristol resident, he has recorded and worked with sounds including the industrial machinery of the Harbourside, the wild nature and Greek architecture of Arnos Vale Cemetery, the underwater soundscapes of the Victoria Rooms’ fountains, Brandon Hill’s waterfalls and the River Frome and the acoustic resonances of the Staple Hill Tunnel, Bristol Cathedral and the Avon Gorge.

For the BBC TV adaptation of Mallory Blackman’s novel Noughts and Crosses, he recorded sounds at locations around Bristol with a history of the slave trade. These included the area around Colston’s Statue, the refurbishment of Colston Hall (now Bristol Beacon), The Sugar House, Bristol Old Vic, The Wills Memorial Building and the recently removed love locks on Pero’s Bridge. He turned these into instruments and musical material which were used to create the score for the series. He has also built acoustic instruments ranging from large-scale outdoor installations with the company Acoustic Arts, to experimental noise makers for work on film, TV and theatre scores.

Beyond screen composition, he has worked on a wide range of projects with a diverse set of collaborators. From sound installations, site-specific theatre and immersive dance productions to interactive audio journeys, community engagement workshops, podcasts, radio shows and live performances.

Stay Connected 

Follow @ginkgoprojects and @dan_pollard_ on social media, and sign-up Ginkgo Projects' newsletter to be the first to hear about upcoming activities and events.