Wetland Project

"The Wetland Project is a beautiful, quietly amazing work of micro-post-geographical art that allows us to be wherever we are and somewhere wonderfully natural and real, simultaneously. It's an experience I wish everyone could have, and I wish there were more experiences like it." - William GibsonThe Wetland Project book is the print component of a multidisciplinary and multimedia project centred on the sounds emanating from the TEKTEKSEN marsh, in unceded W SANEC territory (Saturna Island, British Columbia). The book is edited by artists Brady Marks and Mark Timmings, who have been inspired by the sonic phenomenaproduced by this small patch of Earth to create a 24-hour Slow Radio Broadcast,based on field recordings from the marsh, that radio stations across NorthAmerica and Europe have aired on Earth Day since 2017; a musical arrangementtitled Wetland Senario, co-composed with Stephen Morris and performed byvocal ensemble musica intima; and a new media installation that algorithmicallytransforms sound frequencies from the marsh recordings into pure colour fieldsin flux.Contributors to the book include novelist William Gibson, MP and former Green Party leader Elizabeth May, poet and spoken-word performer Susan McMaster, musicologist Stephen Morris, writer Alex Muir, poet and W SANEC First Nation member Philip Kevin Paul, Sto:lo artist, curator, and scholar Dylan Robinson, sound artist and World Soundscape Project member Hildegaard Westerkamp, and curator, writer, and PhD student Laurie White. The algorithmic flow of colour fields throughout the publication combined with photos of the project and an audio interface accessed using smartphones and tablet devices will give the book a colourful, music box-like quality.Awarded first prize in the pictorial category at the 2022 Alcuin Awards for Excellence in Book Design.