Images and Sound Files to accompany Lara Weaver, 'Wetland, Wasteland, Wealth: Listening to the Northern Irish Peatlands',

Photograph by Lara Weaver, 2022.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Audio 2.</b><b> </b>Short<b> </b>recording of ebullition in Dead Island Bog, Northern Ireland. Two hydrophones record the environment from below the surface in a peat pool. Lara Weaver, 2022.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Figure 3.</b><b> </b>Peat cutting near Slieveanorra, Northern Ireland.

Photograph by Lara Weaver, 2022.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Audio 3.</b><b> </b><i>UNEARTHED</i> (8’ 30”) is a composed compilation of the sounds I heard in Dead Island Bog. From my footsteps on the surface, we submerge into the miry layers of peat, (1’40”), where we encounter the bubble clouds as heard through the hydrophones. We linger here for several minutes in the creaking, squeaking compressions of the peat and the aquatic bubbling and sloshing of the pools.

Attention is drawn to moments of interaction with the peat, where very subtle movements from the surface spark violent sounds in the peat beneath. We then resurface once more through the sounds of my footsteps, rising up through shallower depths and breaking back through the surface into the air.<b> </b>Lara Weaver, 2022.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Figure 4.</b> Induction coil microphone recording a particle accelerator used for radiocarbon dating (Queen’s University Belfast).

Photograph by Lara Weaver, 2023.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Audio 4.</b> Induction coil microphones recording a particle accelerator in Queen’s University Belfast. Lara Weaver, 2023.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Figure 5.</b><b> </b>Ambisonic microphone<b> </b>recording a particle accelerator used for radiocarbon dating (Queen’s University Belfast). Photograph by Lara Weaver, 2023.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Audio 5.</b><b> </b><i>CARBON-14</i> (12’ 30”) demonstrates the sounds of a particle accelerator.

We begin by listening through the Rode Soundfield NT-SF1 Ambisonic microphone, which is recording from the centre of the machine. I speak next to the microphone and draw attention to some of the sounds I am hearing in the room. At 0’50”, the recordings of two coil microphones fade in and layer with the ambisonics, amplifying the tones and clicking noises which I am describing.

Over the next two minutes, the ambisonics are gradually faded out, focussing on the two coil microphones for the remainder of the audio example. The variety of sounds from these coil microphones result from my movements: during recording, I held one coil microphone in each hand and moved them slowly around different parts of the accelerator. The sounds ceased when I stepped away at the end, fading as the microphones were physically removed from the proximate space required for signals to be detected.

The audio example ends once these signals are no longer audible. Lara Weaver, 2023.</p>