“By capturing the sounds of plants and animals, I gain a new empathy for them.” Sound Artist Alice in Battersea Park, London.

Calming waves breaking on a shoreline, the crunch of snow underfoot, a blackbird singing on a branch in the trees, the river gurgling past, crickets chirping in a sunny field...

If you ask someone to describe a beloved memory in nature, sound is the most visceral way they can instantly bring the scene to life. The sound of the sea, known as Mordros in Cornish, is the name of our project and how the idea began. What does this persistent longing for nature, a whisper in the wind, feel like for each of us?

So, on a sunny afternoon in early spring in Battersea Park, a green oasis just by the Thames River, we’re especially excited to be meeting sound artist Alice Boyd to find out her perspective. She has crafted a blended nature-centric career of field recording, audio production, and music. We spot her from afar as she’s carrying a long staff-like recording stick that makes her look like a wizard amongst the shrubbery. 

She’s got an immediate warmth with a big grin, suggesting we meander down to the central pavilion. Alice is dressed in a peach quilted coat, baggy jeans, and doc martens, with bags dangling across her. We sit down in the bandstand which has a sweeping vantage point to paths in all directions, and a cathedral quality to the cavernous rooftop. 

For once, it’s not her doing the recording. She starts by telling us about one of her earliest memories. Her dad took her to painter Monet’s garden in France, where she got to see his paintings and the place that inspired them. A seed was sown, and young Alice realised that responding to nature in a creative way was something worth exploring. 

Growing up in Kent, her mum worked in the environment sector and her dad always loved music. As a stay-at-home father, he encouraged Alice to experiment with music and editing, when pioneering Apple software was in its infancy. 

After working for an environmental organisation, she came back to the arts, starting in a theatre company, that led to audio plays, and eventually a place on a programme called New Voices. It’s run by the charity Sound and Music and supports composers to make a new sound project. 

This led to Alice’s first EP ‘From The Understory’ and a residency in the Eden Project, the world’s largest indoor rainforest and education centre. Her EP mixes human voice, electronic textures created from plants and field recordings, exploring our evolutionary journey of connecting with the biosphere.

She used innovative technology, placing electrodes on plants which collect conductivity data. Instead of plotting the data onto a graph, it is translated through a synthesizer to create melodies, a process called ‘sonification’. It’s a powerful interpretative act that she believes can demonstrate the liveliness of plants, which she hopes will make people think about them differently. 

Alice’s music since then has flourished, with nature as a theme running throughout, using ambient techniques to create atmosphere and compliment the narrative. She performs regularly with her band, including in intimate nature settings, such as on a mountain in Snowdonia, which creates a special feedback loop.

“In the Eden Project, I did a live stream concert from the rainforest biome, playing the sounds back in the place where they came from. I was stood on the platform in the centre of the pond besides a massive waterfall. There were ants crawling up the microphone and lizards in the bushes.”

Alice got her first field recorder in lockdown, at a time when noise shifted worldwide, benefiting wildlife in many places. 

“I really enjoy putting music out and building an audience, as a creative act. Field recording feels very different to making music or sound design as I see it as an act of absorbing.” she says.

The microphone is indiscriminate, picking up any sound without distinguishing its value. Perhaps, that’s where the magic lies in field recording: unexpected things happen to enrich your experience as a listener and keep you on your toes.

While we sit on the bandstand, our recorded conversation is interspersed with constant background hum and rowdy interruptions. Small dogs run between us barking, a plane flies by in the distance, groups of people talk as they pass, children on bikes whizz along, and all around us a cacophony of parakeets chirp away merrily. 

Human interventions are captured truthfully as they mix with natural sounds. Alice believes that it’s very hard to create a pristine soundscape, and aiming to only capture meditative sounds requires hours of editing spliced clips together. What’s left may not reflect the experience of being somewhere uncontrollable, in the wild. 

“At university, I did a course called Geographies of Nature about the dichotomy between humans and nature. I learnt that as a human, we're at least 50% bacteria. That means that we're constantly in flux, interacting with our environment, which soundscapes reflect.” 

In the backdrop, Battersea Power Station looms over the park, once a functioning coal-fired power station, now silent and converted into leisure district, an emblem of a by-gone era.

Alice feels that urban noises like the engines of cars, emitting vast carbon emissions, are predominantly a destruction force for the soundscape. Loud industrial noises like traffic or building work are shown to impact people’s health and wellbeing, with disadvantaged communities most affected and least likely to have green spaces nearby for respite.

One of Alice’s core memories from her childhood in the Kent countryside is evocative of how sound has such a strong impact on us, even subconsciously. 

“I grew up in a valley below the car racing track Brands Hatch. I remember the soundtrack of the summer would be this growl in the distance of the cars and then it would stop, and you'd hear all the birds. That roaring in contrast to the quiet heightens your senses.” 

One place Alice would love to record is in the ocean. However, she is aware of the challenges she would face in a place known to be difficult for isolating sound. Commercial cargo ships especially interfere with sea wildlife. Many whale species struggle to communicate with each other over the high decibel droning ships, and some have had to adapt the pitch and volume of their calls.

Living in London, a vast metropolis, it can be hard for Alice to find tranquility, but the sound of birdsong has an uplifting emotional sway. She describes how people are reassured after a catastrophic disaster when they hear birds sing again. Birdsong is shown to reduce your heart rate and acts as a soothing balm for anxious minds.

For a podcast Alice hosts, she feels lucky to regularly spends long hours searching for bits to record through the seasons in the British landscape, and away from her laptop screen. She takes inspiration from the composer Pauline Oliveros who developed a practice called deep listening, which is a meditative approach. 

Pauline developed exercises on how to connect to the world around you through the act of focusing on distinct types of sounds. For Alice, field recording gives her this state of mind, isolating one sense intently.

We walk to a nearby pond to see her sound artistry in action. She gently lowers the microphone into the water, dangling it like a fishing rod, a delicate silver bauble. Getting the chance to put on her headphones to listen is transfixing, hearing the loud gurgle of water.

Nearby a robin flies and lands on a tiny branch, looking around, before flitting off again into the far reaches of the park.  

Alice’s equipment enables her to hear new sounds of wildlife that are not visible to the naked eye. Her eyes light up describing how it feels to hear what she cannot see.

“I stand so still and wait to see what will happen. I’ve heard things like tadpoles or aquatic plants that I’m suddenly connecting with in a unique way. By capturing the sounds of plants and animals, I gain a new empathy for them.” 

This connection she experiences so acutely makes her want to do even more to protect the creatures that she hears, both a cathartic experience and the catalyst for action. A new project Alice is embarking on captures how climate change has led to biodiversity loss. 

She is retracing the steps of legendary sound recordist Martyn Stewart across the UK to hear what has changed since he was there. Martyn recently released his decades-long collection of almost 100,000 sounds, the largest private collection of natural sound in the world, including recordings of now extinct species.

“He said that it makes him sad that I won't experience the soundscape that he experienced when he was growing up. The world has really moved on, and I think there's something powerful about how the soundscape reflects the state of nature.” Alice laments.

When studying complex ecosystems, like rainforests, conservationists monitor the soundscape for the number and diversity of sounds. In this context, the simple act of hearing becomes a vital barometer for monitoring the health of the planet and its natural inhabitants.

We speak about how listening to each other is incredibly persuasive too, as the main source of perceived trustworthy information comes from our own social circles. That’s why Alice’s rallying cry is to use our voices better, to talk to each other about the climate crisis.

The activist group Extinction Rebellion regularly use the slogan ‘No music on a dead planet’. Sound recordists are on the front line listening for changes that are happening right now, showing that the natural world is dangerously out of kilter. They hear ice breaking in the Arctic, steadily melting away as temperatures rise.

Alice recently collaborated with filmmaker Michelle Sanders on their new project ‘Arctic Ice: Under The Midnight Sun’, a music film including Michelle’s footage from the Arctic, Alice’s soundtrack, and Arctic sound recordings from Martyn Stewart. There is a beauty to be found in sound that can inspire action for our surroundings at a pivotal moment.

There is hope too, as nature decline is reversal. Alice points out that bitterns are a good example. These birds in the heron family have a distinctive call that is starting to be heard again, after nearly becoming extinct in the UK. Our species can make an audible comeback, if we enable them to do so.

We say goodbye to Alice as she carefully puts away her recording equipment. Her dad’s well-worn old headphones are hung around her neck. She swings on her bag with the slogan ‘Fossil Fools’, embodying a cheerful but resolute campaigning streak. 

There’s an echo that lingers when we walk out of the park and back onto the bustling streets: Nature is calling us, and we must listen closely like never before.

You can find Alice Boyd on Instagram @aliceboydmusic and on her website www.aliceboyd.info