Creative Media · 2026 · Self-initiated concept
Field Recordings
Twelve recordings held as the marks they make: a generative archive of sound.
- Format
- Live HTML · PDF, 6 pages
- Discipline
- Creative Media
- Year
- 2026
- Tools
- 7
Overview
Field Recordings is an archive of twelve recordings held as the marks they make. Every page is a different way of reading the same twelve signals.
Challenge
In 1857 Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville patented the phonautograph, which wrote sound onto paper and could not play it back. He expected the lines to be read. The archive takes him at his word, so every shape had to come from the sound itself.
Solution
The twelve recordings were synthesised and are kept as real files, and every figure and shape in the piece is measured from them. The transect, the stations and their grid are invented, and the piece says so.
Process
- 01
Signals
Synthesised twelve recordings and kept them as files.
- 02
Analysis
Measured each one in Python with short-time Fourier transforms.
- 03
Pages
Drew the plates and readings from those measurements.
- 04
Edition
Built one self-contained HTML file and a PDF edition.
Screenshots
Sample Material
Everything behind the project, as it was delivered.
The live build
One self-contained HTML file that runs in the browser, offline, with nothing to install.
Tools used
- HTML & CSS
- WebGL2
- SVG
- Python
- NumPy
- SciPy
- Playwright
Outcomes
- Twelve plates, each a figure only its recording makes.
- Every figure measured from committed audio files.
- Invented elements labelled as invented.
This is a self-initiated concept. The outcomes describe what was made and measured, not results for a client.