I now know that field recording is at the heart of who I am as an artist. It is performative – I can be found tramping across different landscapes at all times of the day and night. And it all started with hearing my first nightingale in 2019 on the Knepp Wildland estate. I was bewitched. I now document biodiversity through tracking the changing soundscapes as rewilding progresses and nature reserves mature. I have received support from the National Lottery through Arts Council England, starting 2020.

I share these soundscapes by: livestreaming each year from the Knepp scrubland for the international Reveil project; uploading recordings to citizen science portals like xeno-canto and dawn-chorus; sharing on SoundCloud (Knepp soundscapes, Knepp nightingale radio) and social media (using these audio animations – starting with a month-long series in lockdown #Springback)

Increasingly I want to capture the full health of the ecology of the landscape, hence my recordings listen beyond the skies, to under water, to mammals, insects, with current experiments on ‘listening’ to trees, plants, soil, fungi, mycelium.

Field recording collaborations

– Knepp Wildand – ongoing recording, artist residency (2021), Reveil livestreaming

– ‘Lark Ascending’ project with British Library Sound Archive, the Wildlife Sound Recording Society, and The Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust (skylark recordings)

– British Library Sounds Archive – archiving my past/ongoing field recordings of nightingales and the dawn chorus at Knepp Wildland

– Stefan Taylor, Listen with Nature – Svartådalan Swedish field recording trip and collaboration