beating the bounds

forces: two-channel acousmatic composition
commissioned as part of the Wavefarm Artist-in-residence Program

audio coming soon

The tradition of beating the bounds originated in France, England, and Wales in the 16th Century. This practice involved the members of a village or parish walking the property bounds of their territory yearly as a way to teach younger generations about the spatial limits of property ownership. Beating the bounds involves walking the edges of a property and sounding a stick against a way post that marks the extents of the property.

For my project, I developed a system that would allow sound to mark the bounds of a physical area of outdoor space on the property of Wave Farm. The geo-spatial limits of a radio-defined landscape were delimited by transmitting from a recording of a post-striking via the Wave Farm Mobile AM Outpost, then, by placing a boombox at the property-edge recordings were made at regular intervals toward the center of the property. By spatially recording the strikes with the distanced receiver and loudspeaker, the communal experience becomes one of listening to the bounds sound the interior and marking the volume of the property rather than the borders.