Parsons’ Cove Recordings, Summer 2005
8.7.05: low tide at 7:42 pm. recorded from 6:10 to 7:40 or so. warm weather, warm water, mild wind, frequent small waves, lots of seaweed. one metal stake was knocked into the sand with a rock, the hydrophone was held to the stake with a cable tie just above the waterline and hung into the water. seaweed accumulated around the stake. recorded with marantz digital audio recorder in uncompressed pcm (.wav) format.
8.8.05: low tide at 8:10 am. recorded from 7:15 to 8:30 or so. warm weather, warm water, moderate wind, frequent small waves, lots of seaweed. recording set up as the previous day. recorded until machine ran out of batteries.
8.9.05: low tide at 8:42 am. recorded from 7:45 to 9:15 or so. warm weather, warm water, no wind, frequent small waves, larger, and more frequent after low tide, lots of seaweed. two metal stakes were knocked into the sand with a rock. a third stake was suspended between them, at around the waterline, with cable ties. the hydrophone was held to the third stake with a cable tie at the center of the stake and hung into the water. even more so than previously, seaweed accumulated around the stake, catching all along the cross-stake. recorded until marantz recorder inexplicably shut off and would not turn back on. no water damage observed.
8.10.05: low tide at 9:17 am. recorded from 8:30 to 10:00 or so. warm weather, warm water, mild wind, frequent small waves, larger and more frequent after low tide, lots of seaweed. similar set up as previous morning, except that the third stake was suspended high above the waterline, successfully preventing seaweed from accumulating. recorded with sony digital minidisc recorder in a proprietary compressed format. three minutes before the end of the 80 minute tape, the tripod fell into water as i was adjusting stakes. this killed the minidisc recorder which, thus, was unable to complete the “data save” resulting in the loss of the recording.
8.12.05: low tide at 10:38 am. recorded from 9:10 to 10:45 or so. cool weather, cool water, mild wind, infrequent large breakers (1-2.5 feet high), smaller and more frequent after low tide. no seaweed. set up as previous morning except that the third stake was lowered to about midway up the first two stakes so that the suspended hydrophone would move less freely (in the stronger waves it was being whipped out of the water). recorded with a new sony digital hi-md minidisc recorder in uncompressed pcm (.wav) format. with two and a half minutes remaining, microphone started peaking and much of the final two minutes of the recording is static. the remainder of the recording is very clean.
This weekend I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with these recordings. First I thought I would glue small speakers to the backs of sand dollars and hang them from the ceilings with little LEDs, but how am I going to power a hundred channels of sound? Then I thought I would put the sand dollars in large speaker cones on the ground, but the sand dollars make a loud ugly sound when each wave crashes, much louder than the sound of the waves, and it’s the same sound every time, obliterating the differences from wave to wave. So now i’m not sure. Maybe a better approach is to write about why I wanted to make the recordings.