ABSTRACT
In relation to an artistic practice, ten years of living in a remote and bleak landscape has resulted in a desire to strip things back to their bare essentials. Aurally and visually the aesthetic is often sparse. Psychologically it can be a harsh environment to negotiate. Iconic trees and strident electricity poles burn their outlines on to the author's retinas and function as markers to orientate myself. On the path to Steall waterfall in Glen Nevis, whilst searching with sound recordist Peter Lanceley for the silence symbolic of remoteness in his imagination, their ears seemed to search instinctively for sound. The silence comes in between the sounds but mostly it doesn't come at all, fleeting pockets of nothing. They gravitated towards running burns and rustling leaves and made futile attempts to record ephemeral evidence of quiet, and instead used noise to describe silence.
