Whispers of the Past (paper and composition)

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Our paper ‘Whispers of the Past’ and our collective composition with the same title have been accepted for presentation at the MANTIS ‘Sound in Words’ Festival of Electroacoustic Music between 4-6 March 2022. MANTIS takes place at the University of Manchester, UK.

Below is the abstract of our paper, followed by the programme note of our composition.

Paper abstract

The Oral History Archive at Chatham Historic Dockyard provides an insight into the daily routines of people who worked at the dockyard and in the navy and those who lived in the Medway Towns. In collaboration with Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, we borrowed and digitised those archives, and we enriched them with new interviews we conducted of former dockyard workers. Within these recordings, old and new, men and women share their stories detailing their daily routines while working at the yard. They tell us about the impact of conflict on their lives and the chaos that ensued as a result of wars. We hear personal accounts, moving stories, descriptions, memories and anecdotes that become vivid and alive again through the voices of those who experienced them.

We will be discussing our experience of creating ‘Whispers of the Past’, a collection of miniatures that explores stories from archives from men and women who worked at the Chatham Dockyard before its closure in 1984. It was first presented as a geolocated soundwalk at the Chatham Historic Dockyard maritime heritage site, as part of the Electric Medway Festival, and remains a permanent feature at the Dockyard Museum.

Programme Note

Whispers of the Past (13’10”; 2021)

‘Whispers of the Past’ is a collection of 10 miniatures that explore and present stories from archives from people who worked at the Chatham Dockyard. The work is part of our research project ‘A Sonic Palimpsest: Revisiting Chatham Historic Dockyards’ and was commissioned by SparkedEcho as part of the Electric Medway Festival. Our research is funded by the AHRC.

(NB. The list below gives the starting time in brackets for each miniature.)

  1. It’s Dante’s Inferno Here [0’00”]
  2. Covered in Coal [1’21”]
  3. A Master Ropemaker [2’47”]
  4. Sirens in the Night [3’52”]
  5. A Tracer at the Dockyard [5’30”]
  6. It’s like a small city [6’38”]
  7. Working in the Ropery [8’28”]
  8. The Fog of November [9’35”]
  9. Working Together [10’40”]
  10. The Closure of the Dockyard [12’06”]