Extract from Birds/Humans/Machines/Dolphins
by Genevieve Carver
METHOD STATEMENT
Objectives
Make meaning of blubber and bone.
Render each creature more itself than it knows how. Give purpose to porpoise, definition to dolphin.
Survey Design
Be go-between, medium, shapeshifter. Play fast and loose with the data. A translator with an agenda is an explosive thing.
Sampling Locations
Moray West – out past the gas graveyards, the oil-rig mausoleums. Out to where the gales are caught in wide white arms and thrown down ducts with electric gusto.
Moray East, where the monopods line up like ancient stone rows, the nacelles tremble with progress.
Beatrice, who dreams in watts and shakes the sandbank in her sleep.
Sampling Periods
Every time someone says ‘slack tide’
When the cloud lifts, the unforgiving grey allows
When terns wear the Westerlies like Flamenco dresses
When flukes smack the ocean’s skin like revellers collapsing on the dancefloor
In between coffee breaks
Methods
Sea swimming
Tongue clicking
Self-aware anthropomorphism
Notebooks with marine-themed covers
Blue ink
Hydrophone
I hear what you don’t – minke whale fog-horn – hammer of haddock’s swim bladder – alto dolphin –
and what you can’t – dog-whistle sonar - soprano dolphin – higher than Minnie Riperton – than tinnitus / puppy yelp / baby wail –
I lock the notes inside me – like childhood – pass them on – like lullabies – melody flowing through umbilical cable –
Spectrogram
/ a picture of sound /
/ a rainbow of music /
/ a ribbon of echoes /
/ dolphin whistles are blue mountains /
/ over bedrock of boat noise /
/ meadow of swell-grind /
/ pixels of frequencies /
/ noisy as oil paint /
/ Kandinsky’s dream /
/ a dance about architecture /
/ a technicolour melody /
/ harmonic reflections /
/ shimmering on the sonic lake /
~ echolocation click ~
this is the sound
of listening
the language of call
and response
rippling through
whole body
leaving like a streamer
returning like trumpets
from the gallery
in the knave
musical map vibrating
in guitar-belly head
softened by pillows
of held breath
ocean as orchestral score
seaweed as tangle
of earworms squirming
questioning
probing
searching
the song in the mirror
fathoming
foraging
the voice in the cave
~ buzz ~
those quickening clicks
rhythmic as drumrolls
are in fact blood-howls
zeroing in on a target
charging like a pack
of sea-hounds coursing
sometimes its food –
lithe muscle of salmon caught
by timpani crash of clicks
sometimes it’s a plaything –
a porpoise to bludgeon
to stone-cold blubber
or one of our own –
a podless calf to harry to shreds
of skin and broken bone
you’ve read the smile all wrong
the bully-smirk of apex boss
ambassadors of ASBO Britain
the poster of us leaping
with the motivational quote
should read
Live
Laugh
Fuck Shit Up
~ whistle ~
hello
or I miss you
or go left
or I’m here
or I’m myself, my own dolphin and no other
or I’m tired
or go away
or let’s play
or dare you to rub your belly on the beach
or do you ever feel like an empty razor clam?
or good one
or nice flippers
or do you ever dream of swimming in air?
or do you surface gasping, rock-scars searing your flanks?
or I like you
or here come the shore-walkers, finless and stiff
or the cloud-beasts grazing the hill, so graceful when they leap!
or eat my slipstream
or my blowhole’s clogged with storm scud
or salmon steak!
or mine!
or it’s like the legends say, above the surface only silence
↑