Untitled (Tidal resonance)

Where the tides draw in at the edge of the sea, you lose the shape of things.

Standing on the shore of the River Severn in southwest UK, the tessellated mudflats stretch some ninety metres to meet the water’s edge. My feet slowly sink into the miry ground below as I watch the water steadily advance, folding over itself and erasing the tessellations on the way into shore.

To remain here long enough is to sense that within the repetition of the tides lies insistent variation. There is no boundary here, only gradients, delays, and overlaps.

In the sound installation work untitled (tidal resonance), field recordings made along the 350-kilometre length of the River Severn are modulated by predictive tidal data for the year 2035. Both speculative and grounded, the piece reflects on the inevitability of tidal motion and on our shifting relationship with what is forecast, expected, or yet to come.

Cast in three sections, the work moves from the deep propulsion of underwater currents, through the resonances of beached ships at Purton, and into the wholly unforeseeable, catastrophic, and uncharted.

What is it to be held within the intertidal?

Not as a moment. Not as a place.

But as a duration,

drawn out, returning, never still.