Dark, Sloshing
Sonia Levy & Lucy A. Sames, 2024
30’06”
Audio Composition: Sonia Levy
Written Text: Lucy A. Sames
Sound Recording: Sonia Levy
Additional Recording Support: Sam Smith
Audio Mixing: Nick Powell
Dark, Sloshing is an audio work by Sonia Levy and Lucy A. Sames, created in response to the heavily engineered and long-neglected riparian worlds of East Bristol's historic industrial zone. The composition weaves field recordings and voice, moving above and below water, as it traces canals, bridges, electric grids, train lines, and highways. The work interrogates altered dynamics of social, hydrological, and urban processes, reflecting the city’s imperial, infrastructural, and ecological entanglements.
The composition centres sound recordings conducted in and around Silverthorne Lane, the Feeder Canal, and the Avon estuary, using underwater and contact microphones. These recordings travel above and below the waterline, bridges, electric grid, trainlines and roads, capturing the muted soundscapes of ecological formations amidst infrastructures. They explore altered dynamics among metabolic, industrial, and urban processes. The composition opens with a quote from Bristol-born artist Richard Long: ‘Mud is a mixture of time, water, and stone’ and continues with a text developed through site visits, listening, research, and ecological surveys of the same area.
Commissioned by Gingko Projects, Dark, Sloshing forms part of a larger project led by artists Rachael Champion and Jonathan Trayte.