A small taster of the sights and sounds of Silver Banks, in the Dominican Republic, from a trip I was lucky to take part in with TBA21, made possible by Francesca von Habsburg. On board the boat was a combination of film-makers, sound recordists and scientists, collaborating on a range of projects, from collecting data on the whales and coral reefs, underwater photography, documentary making and recording the deep blue sounds of humpbacks and coral life for future artworks by Jana Winderen and Chris Watson. Quite a melting pot, and there's more about the TBA21-Academy here. Below is sample of the kind of whalesongs we recorded, some of which continue for 40 minutes or more.
Things that go crump in the night
A thwat from the past – back from the days of doing The Pitchers comic strip for the Guardian. It came to mind because I've been doing a bit of foley work recently, for a couple of ads and interactives, and it galvanised me to share a clip from the BFI/Touch collacboration I worked on, Fairy Tales. Actually, no chickens were harmed in the making of this, but a saw did get abused slightly.
The sound of one hand spanking
Another of the Young Vic/Guardian films
'How do you do business with a man who has no door?'
Local Hero, one of my favourite films, inspired a travel piece for the Guardian.
That's another fine beep you've got me in to
Oh hell, April fool and the Guardian. Still, at least it's not covering Coldplay this year.