In 1859, naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace coined the term ‘ecotone’ to describe transitional areas where different ecological communities meet. Known for their richness of biodiversity, ecotones are often among the first environments to exhibit responses to climate change. Wallace considered these zones as ‘points of tension’, naming them after the ancient Greek word for stress (tonos). Incidentally, the terms tone and tune, used to describe the characteristics of sound, have their etymological origins in the same place. All of these words derive their meaning from the tension of taut strings of musical instruments. As an artist working primarily with sound, this connection between sound and environment intrigued me. The notion of listening in sites of tension felt poignant, especially in the context of ecological breakdown.

I was keen to know if these ecological tensions were perceivable, if they could be heard. I have listened on the fringes of boggy wetlands in Denmark, on arctic tundra in Northern Finland, in glacial pools in Norway, and in the old-growth forests of British Columbia, Canada. Each of these sites offered a wildly different experience and helped to broaden my understanding on what it means to listen, what it is to be human.

The more time I spent in ecotones, the wider my focus became. Additional layers of meaning arose from the ecological tensions. I started to draw parallels between the precarious properties of the ecotone and my experience of gender as a non-binary trans person. I have often found that my body and my ‘nature’ are contested due to tensions between what is felt internally and how I am met by the world. Like the ecotone, the boundaries of trans bodies are never clearly defined or fixed, often in perpetual transition, and can display non-linearity in their movements through time and space. I felt a kinship with the ecotones fluctuating borders and the precarity that comes with mutability. Under the working title of Queer Ecotones I have been establishing these intersections, considering both the ecotone and the non-binary trans body as sites of tension, as sites in which to listen.

For the Sound Diaries project, I wanted to turn my attention specifically to intertidal ecosystems. I had recently relocated to the North East of England and thought this project would be a good opportunity to conduct fieldwork on the Northumberland coast, which was now on my doorstep. Off the mainland in the North Sea, just south of the Scottish border is the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. Lindisfarne is a tidal island with a long monastic history. There is evidence of settlements on the island dating back to around 634 AD.

I have always been drawn to tidal islands. This was likely instigated when visiting St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall on a family holiday as a child. I am fascinated by the endless cycles of revealing and concealing. What is visible or accessible in a tidal zone is structured and determined by factors outside of human control. Visibility and transparency have been major themes in my sculptural and installation work over the last decade, where I have tried to make the process of perceiving sound as visible and comprehensible as possible. My work with ecotones shares the same desire for simplicity, imagining a softer type of environmental listening that requires nothing but the human body itself.

In snowy January, I spent three days on Lindisfarne. Snugly wrapped up in four layers, gloves, and two scarves, I wandered across the island. Passing the vicarage and the priory ruins I found myself at Lindisfarne’s south shore. Just off the coastline is St. Cuthbert’s Island, a tidal island off of a tidal island. This tiny islet is named after the saint who reportedly lived here in solitude after retiring from monastic life in 676 AD. When I arrived, the tide was low but on the rise. There was enough time to skip across the mudflats before the islet was inaccessible by foot.

Squawking terns and seabirds roamed the mudflats, occupying the wettest parts of the sands where the tide was starting to rise. Oystercatchers and other wading birds were also noisily looking for food. A lone grey heron stood motionless with its feet in the shallows, silently surveying the area.

I also began to survey, noticing that at low tide it is possible to identify all of the distinct intertidal stages, from the fully submerged to the fully exposed and everything in between. I decided it would be interesting to walk through the tidal stages on foot, traversing the route of the rising tide linearly from its lowest point to its highest. I mapped out a route that started in the shallows of the sea and ended on land overlooking the spray zone, high above the water line. As I navigated through the various stages, I was surprised to find so many discrete gradations between the low and high tide, each with distinct ecologies and perceivable characteristics.

I started this process like the heron, placing my feet in the lapping sea. Soft vibrations caressing my ankles as the water gently pulsed. Each step forward disrupted the tidal rhythms, creating smaller splashes of my own. The suction of the wet sand means additional energy is needed until I can step above the water line. On the sticky mudflats, soft mounds of sand contain pools of water that wrinkle rhythmically in the northerly winds. Around the pools the surface of the sand fissures with deep, rippled trenches. Traces of the previous tide. The sand is littered with small white pebbles, each step crunching grittily. Across the sand, olive green seaweed congregates loosely in small piles, slippery and squeaking underfoot. Another few steps and the sand is covered in a bed of shingles with a few protruding stones and boulders. Hardened barnacles coat the stones, to where the sea extends to at higher tides. Moving further from the water, the stones increase in size. Pebbles becoming cobbles becoming boulders.

I take a step up onto the rocks, but unexpectedly, the terrain softens underfoot. I find myself standing on a vast bed of olive green algae strewn across the boulders. The algae here is mostly bladderwrack, a leafy strap-like seaweed with air-filled pockets. These little pouches of air allow it to float to the surface to photosynthesise. This buoyancy affords the algae a degree of agency in navigating the tides.

The reality of tidal life is to be perpetually in transit. One must learn how to survive above and below the waterline. Species that find their way above the surface, even temporarily, must adapt to withstand drastic changes in temperature and salinity. They must be able to find shelter and security, and resist drying out and loss of moisture. To be exposed above the water comes with the threat of marine predators and the barrage of crashing waves and debris. At low tide, the bladderwrack collapses in huge piles to provide protection for itself and its neighbours. The wrack at the top of the pile bears the greatest risk and exposure to harm but their placement will change with every tide. Bladderwrack’s protective qualities may have been the inspiration for its long history of being used as a talisman to safeguard sailors and those traversing the seas.

As I reflected on what it means to live between the tides, I felt a stirring of kinship rising within me. I recognised that like the bladderwrack, trans folk also rely heavily on their peers to stay safe in inhospitable environments. When adrift in gender, one exists beyond or between the currents of masculinity and femininity. Perhaps some of us are simply born in the wrong ecosystem. There is safety in dwelling in a single ecosystem. Navigating across community boundaries can be dangerous. The path ahead is not always obvious nor safe, moving collectively can be a matter of survival. Such a transition is not a singular action or point in time, it is often a lifelong process of understanding and adapting to internal and external changes. Some of us are buoying precariously, living in the cycles of the tide. There is freedom to be had in precarity, but it comes at the expense of security.

Beyond the bed of seaweed, spotted boulders are coated with vibrant algae and bright white bird waste. Clambering up into the spray zone, one finds small rock pools teeming with microscopic life. Over time, fluids and matter amass here from breaking waves and errant sea spray. The wet rocks surrounding the pools are bare, whilst the drier, taller rocks have a crust of colourful lichen, dappled in bright hues from mustard yellow to khaki green. Softening underfoot again, tufts of turf appear. Sporadically at first, atop the rocks and in their crevices, before the topography smooths out. Mounds of soil provide a grounding for a clumpy carpet of snow-covered yellowed grass rolled out above the rocks leading towards the island’s summit. Longer grass undulates and hisses in the wind alongside swaying reeds and deep red vegetation.

At the summit, I contemplated the short journey I had undertaken. In a few hours’ time much of it would be hidden underwater and the islet would be inaccessible by foot. There was something poignant about this tidal journey but I needed more time to make sense of all of the connections that had arisen. I decided to walk the route again, back and forth, to deeply consider the tensions of each zone.

The lower intertidal areas are its most diverse, where life is predominantly spent underwater. Further from the seabed it becomes less and less habitable. Towards the high-water mark, survival comes with additional stresses. Life here is tougher and therefore less abundant.

Can these tensions be heard? From my experience, it was possible to hear some of these ecological tensions. However, attuning to these stresses through listening was mapped on an inverse scale. The areas of highest tension were markedly still and almost silent. Life was visible, but it was operating on scales beyond what was perceivable through my senses alone, especially with the rush of winds howling across the island. Few lifeforms survive in these uncompromising environments of high tension. Here, it is easier to hear the absence of life through its silence, then to witness its presence. In contrast, the lower tidal areas were much noisier, bustling with marine life. Other than the elemental forces present, only the predators with the highest agency within the environment could be heard.

In the months following my trip to Lindisfarne, I continued to reflect upon my experiences. I wrote two poems, considering text as a means to explore the representation and documentation of sound outside of the realms of phonography. Besides audio recordings, what other ways are there to document sound? I had read that the word ‘record’ had once meant to learn something by heart. I adopted this approach and tried to remain as present as possible whilst on location.

The first poem, ‘Bladderwrack’, was written in response to my encounters with seaweed on Lindisfarne, drawing connections between intertidal ecologies, sound, and gender. It expands upon what I have written above, exploring notions of being adrift and in transit. The poem adopts an amorphous form, echoing the characteristics of the algae.

The second poem, ‘Rogue Acoustics’, is a satirical work examining the language of field recording and sound technologies through a fictional hunting scenario. The tone is overtly masculine and patriarchal, exaggerated for comic effect. It borrows much of its grammar and sentiment from Thomas Edison’s advertisements for the phonograph in the 1870s, highlighting the dominant legacies of extraction, accumulation, and commerciality in our contemporary vocabulary.

two poems