Method:

The familiar score of ‘follow the dog’ has now become so natural to us both that it could perhaps be modified to walk with another, familiar non-human body, as his cues and invitations become more subtle and intuitive. This is evident on the beach, as an open space, and a landscape which is much more alien to a pair of city dwellers, and about as elemental raw as one might encounter.

Using a combination of canine chest mounted GoPro camera, and human hand-held points of view, this film was constructed from a several walks along the North Norfolk coast (UK), conducted in October 2020. In addition, this film merges sound from the canine POV, with binaural sound, recorded from the human POV. The film is quite deliberately edited and the use of three channels reflects early experiments with the tryptic as a way of blending rhythms and further hybridising human and canine perspectives.

The Beach Beneath our Feet, borrows its title from McKenzie Warks 2011 book The Beach Beneath the Street, The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International. Which explores the history of the Situationist’s revolutionary art practices, including the Derive, or practice of drifting. It combines the concept of the drift plays with ideas of deep time through the choice of including Happisburgh beach, and its association with the oldest human footprints discovered in Europe, and the fact that as a landscape the area is slowly being lost to the sea through erosion.

Equipment/materials:

• Go Pro camera
• Roland binaural in-ear microphones
• Olympus digital Dictaphone
• iMac
• Adobe Premier Pro
• Reaper Audio (digital recording studio)

Discoveries:

On reflection the film is perhaps a little over edited, which is something I try and address in a later film, A Year With the Meadows, in which take a more chance based approach. Anecdotal responses to the film suggest that people find it relaxing and offering a deeper connection with landscape that a human only POV would miss. I think part of this is due to the binaural soundscape, the cross rhythms of the sea and the paw, and the slight reverb I added to the sound to generate a feeling of open space.