The destination of our trip to the South Island, was the glacier. Derek’s idea was to record the sounds of the glacier. A very generous guy called Duncan – an employer of the local DOC – invited us to stay at his house in Franz and guided us up the glacier. Equipped with crampons, ice axes and our recording equipment, we spent six hours on the ice..
On the most stormy morning in Wellington we chose to take the ferry to Picton. As a result we were stuck on the boat for almost five hours; two hours longer than usual. I managed to sleep at least three quarters of the journey but went outside as soon as I was awake to enjoy the splashing salty water and strong sea wind.
Here are some results after a day of sanding and drilling found sheep bones. The art of getting sounds out of them requires some patience and a lot of practice. Derek found some images of early Maori instruments and went from there.
Oil platforms attrack my attention. As enormous sea-insects, they dominate various coast lines, sucking black sirope out of the ocean’s bottom. I always wonder what’s life like there. A seemingly autonomous zone full of hard working men (?), responsible for the aquirement of this complex natural resource. Complex and powerful in many ways, environmentally, economically and politically.
While we didn’t get access to the oil platform, I visited the oil plant – with a scale model of both the plant and the rig – on the Taranaki coast. With my medium format camera, I captured the plant in twilight. (The images below are snapshots from my digital camera, since I haven’t been able to digitize the analogue slides yet)
