Steven Goodwin's soundscape Windswept No. 3 is inspired by Phyllis Wager's typewriter in the collection of the Polar Museum.
When Phyllis Wager travelled to East Greenland as part of a British expedition in 1935, it was so unusual for women to travel to the Polar regions that special permission was needed from the Foreign Office. What can her typewriter tell us about her work?
Steven writes,
"This soundscape transitions from the literal to the abstract. Beginning with the Arctic blizzard, you can hear the typewriter being prepared for a session. Then, as the keys start hammering, the blizzard subsides and the key strokes become longer and longer to representing the slowing of time experience when writing. The typewrite sounds are stretched, and applied with effects such that they eventually sound like a blizzard, to reflect the authors experience - now of an internalised reality which has replaced the outside wind. Such is the intensity of the writing process that the listener hardly notices the outside blizzard has disappeared, and the key strokes become so long (to represent the 6-month long arctic days and nights) that they take the place of the outside wind.
It is appealing because it reflects the way we internalise our thought processes in isolation. Whether a literal lockdown isolation, or a virtual one as experienced when playing games, or reading books.
I approached it as an exercise in taking one sound from the object (the typewriter), and processing it until it sounded like the environment in which it was used (the Arctic.)
Getting objects understood and reflect in situ, especially through alternate mediums, I find to be quite different to a museum's printed label."
Charlotte Connelly, Museum Curator at the Polar Museum, responds:
"I got a lot from this interpretation of the typewriter and the writer’s experience. For all that the expedition took place in a relatively isolated part of Greenland, the expedition members were living in close quarters for much of the time. I imagine writing could have been a retreat from the day-to-day activities of living in a remote part of Greenland, and really enjoyed the meditative feeling I got from this piece."
This track is part of the Museum Remix: Unheard project. Find out more at www.museums.cam.ac.uk/museumremix.
You can find out more about Phyllis Wager's typewriter at: www.museums.cam.ac.uk/magic/phyllis-wagers-typewriter
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