Chris Watson, Alec Finlay

CD version. Scottish poet and artist Alec Finlay, whose work ranges across many media, took the Cairngorms, Scotland’s largest mountain range, as the subject of gathering (Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018). The project used poems, essays, maps, photographs and walking guides to carry out a practice of mapping and was published as a book. As part of that project, Finlay worked with Chris Watson, a leading figure in field recording, on this sound work, which recreates the area's lost ecosystems and traces their memory. Across this vast landscape they chose eleven recording points, each associated with an extinct animal or a native species. A single copy of an original record containing the animals' calls was pressed and played on a portable player at each site, and the playback was re-recorded together with the present-day surroundings. The result is a document that unravels the many-layered memory of the land through the soundscapes of past and present.

Includes a 20-page A4 booklet, in English and Japanese, with details of each location and the animal sounds played at each point, plus photographs of the recording sessions. Comes with a download code.