Field Recordings of former South London Windmills

Field Recordings of former South London Windmills is an installation based around an imaginary album of the same name. The piece contains two museum display cases showing archive images of each windmill and its corresponding soundtrack, as well as a short film entitled Windmills of your Mind, which was filmed at the site of a saw mill near the Oxo Tower.

The piece is an exploration of field recording and its relationship with both London’s contemporary soundscape and its history .  By recording absent structures the work questions the claim that a field recording contains some kind of essential sound.  When we listen we also imagine, and when we imagine we also hear.  This work aims for a third space where memory and ‘real’ sound meet.

The record cover and inner sleeve can be viewed in more detail here and here. Below are some example of the recordings themselves, with images of the corresponding windmills:

Red House Mill, Battersea, Wandsworth Sound recording 2’21″

A pair of post mills, Hungerford Bridge, Lambeth

Sound recording 2’21″

Dale’s Mill, Rotherhithe New Road, Southwark

Sound recording 2’21

Windmills of your Mind

video 2’21″

filmed at the site of the saw mill, near Waterloo, Lambeth