Echoes: sound mirrors exhibition at Ramsgate Festival of Sound
29/07/2020 | Lawrence Northall
East Kent Coast Discovery Programme is very excited to announce the success of their Arts Council funding bid to host an exhibition & installation on sound mirrors as part of the Ramsgate Festival of Sound.
A sound mirror in use (image: National Trust)
We are very grateful to the festival organisers who have adapted to the difficult challenges faced by coronavirus & guarded against the disappointing prospect of missing Ramsgate’s much loved & unique celebration. The festival’s sonic trail will be running between 9th-13th September (with social distancing measures in place) & CITiZAN’s installation Echoes will be held in the East Cliff bandstand of Wellington Crescent.
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Sound mirror at Abbottscliffe near Folkestone (image: CITiZAN)
Sound mirrors were early warning acoustic detection systems for use against enemy aircraft & mostly built in coastal locations around the south & east coasts of England. Though weather dependent, in the era of slow moving aircraft the advantage of a 15min pre-warning they could afford was considered useful enough to manufacture the earliest experimental & then operation models in Kent between 1915-1918. By reflecting soundwaves off curved spherical surfaces they not only concentrated them but could also take limited directional readings of incoming sounds & generate cross bearings by comparing data from different coastal locations. The communication model & triangulation of positioning this required was a major forerunner to the systems used by radar, a technology which outmoded the sound mirrors with at least twice the range & greater accuracy in the mid 1930’s. However by this time a large complex of acoustic mirrors had already undergone testing in Denge, a 200ft installation with multiple mirrors was established in Malta & there had even been plans, by their foremost proponent Major William Sansome Tucker, to construct a 471ft model at Fan Bay, Dover.
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Last remaining of the Hythe sound mirrors (built 1929), where there was an acoustical research station (image CITiZAN)
Unsurprisingly some of Kent’s sound mirror heritage lies in the intertidal zone & CITiZAN has recently been photographing & monitoring the condition of sound mirror archaeology at risk of erosion as well as better surviving examples. The exhibition Echoes will present the history of these, assess their current state & look into the unusual story of acoustic detection more generally. We will be presenting field recordings taken from a central focal point of Fan Bay’s recently excavated mirrors, as well as constructing our own functioning sound mirrors, for the audience to experiment with & add into a live sound piece.
As part of the installation CITiZAN are building their own experimental acoustic mirrors (image: CITiZAN)
For more information on the sonic trail please go to ramsgatefestival.org