Sound Diaries: Subway Soundings

photos, writing, recording and production BY hannah fredsgaard-jones
commissioned by the sonic Art research unit
in partnership with oxford brookes university

Field recording, writing, composition, sound design and performance

An audio piece by Hannah Fredsgaard-Jones for Sound Diaries Open Call 2024

The original 4 speaker piece was performed at Sound Diaries Open Call Festival May 2024 using a cast iron pigeon, a jam jar, a coke can, a coin, a hair pin and a parcel receipt as touch sensitive sound triggers.

The piece is composed of numerous field recordings from pedestrian tunnels in Oxford, Copenhagen, Brighton and Milford Haven, poems and text and additional compositional elements. Field recordings were captured using a coil mic, binaural headphones and a handheld H4 Zoom Recorder

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"Stay away from the subway at night!" my parents admonished me. Growing up on the outskirts of Copenhagen near Ryparken station, the underpass offered a convenient route home, allowing pedestrians to traverse beneath the busy road. In my recollections, it's a dim, dreary path with shattered glass scattered about, a faint aroma of urine, unidentified liquid puddles, at least one half-broken, intermittently flashing light, and an impressive echoing resonance.

I ventured into the subway only when feeling courageous. Sometimes I challenged myself to hold my breath from end to end, or I dared to immerse myself in the peculiar underground acoustics, experimenting with my own voice reverberating through the passageway.

He shares his grandmother’s recipe for preserved apricots

in Warsaw where she placed them

whole into jars for winter

only to be told by her daughter

that you must pit them

she didn’t listen.

Location: Long Lane and Eastern Bypass Road, Oxford

Date: 23.02.2024

(Excerpt from 'Subway Soundings' to be published in the 'a row of trees', The Journal of The Sonic Art Research Unit, Autumn 2024.

a black and white photo of an entrance to a pedestrian tunnel
a black and white photo of an entrance to a pedestrian tunnel
Selected Field Recordings 2023-2024.

Location: Brighton, Copenhagen, Milford Haven, Oxford. Topic: Pedestrian Tunnels

Recordings made with: Zoom H5, Sennheiser AMBEO headphones for binaural recording, JrF Coil Mic.