Exploring the Night Time Forest

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS will draw on local Cairngorm legends as well as environment in an artistic illumination of a section of Glenmore Forest Park

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS is part of the Forestry Commission’s Touchwood Project to mark Highland 2007, and is the first time that they have attempted anything of this kind in Glenmore.

They commissioned Diane Maclean (environmental artist), Malcolm Innes (lighting artist) and Bob Pegg (storyteller and musician) to put together a project combining lighting, sound and story along a 3km walkway in the forest.

Northings asked each of the artists to describe their involvement in the project.
 

DIANE MACLEAN

I WAS contacted by David Jardine from the Forestry Commission, and he explained that the project they had in mind was to have artists interpret the forest in a night-time project that would reveal different aspects of it. I needed a lighting expert, and I approached Malcolm and asked if he would be interested in coming in on this. Since then we have worked together on it.

As well as having a genuine artistic dimension to it, they were very keen for us to adhere quite a bit to natural happenings in the forest, and to bring that into our programme as well, which we have done. We have incorporated natural sounds, but we have also commissioned Bob Pegg to write some wonderful music for us for several of the events – for want of a better description – along the way.
 
There are quite a lot of archaeological remains and historical associations, and we have been inspired to create something using that history, rather than trying to interpret them literally. We have looked for inspirational ideas based on that, and interpreted them with light and sound.

Being in the forest at night is something that most people don’t experience, and that is something that we have taken into account. We didn’t want to light it so that it looked like a night club or something – we have tried to do it in a way that will allow people to experience the mystery and magic of the forest by night.

Each of our interventions is like a separate art work, so there are different things to experience all along the trail. There is moving projection onto a hill at one point, which is like a performance, and sound is crucial to what we are doing.

There will also be a photographic and video record made of it, and Bob’s music and stories will be on a CD. We have worked with a number of myths and legends of the Cairngorms, mainly those collected by Affleck Gray, and created some bits of myth and stories of our own to fill in the gaps.

MALCOLM INNES

WE talked long and hard about the kind of things we wanted to do, and David’s brief was very definite about the fact that they wanted us to take an artistic approach. There are quite a lot of night-time events now in the outdoors and in botanical gardens and so on, but the brief for this was always slightly different.

The idea was to create something special for the year of Highland Culture, and we thought a lot about what form that might take, and how we might do something that went beyond just lighting up the forest in an attractive way, which in some ways is quite easy to do. We’ve tried hard to avoid doing things that might look like something people have seen elsewhere.

One thing we were very keen on doing was to create an event that had some kind of story line running through it, and we have ended up pulling multiple strands together, with several stories running through the event. I think of it as performance, but one where you can’t necessarily see the performers.

A lot of that was sparked off by the brief we were given, because the Forestry Commission were keen to have an event that not only looked at the forest as it is now, but also investigated its past and its future. That provided the impetus for us to bring in quite a lot of different influences and story-lines.

There are probably a lot more ideas that fed into creating the events than will be explicit in the final piece, and we are quite happy to have such a richness of material feeding in, whether it is the history or the archaeology or the wildlife and environment that has provided inspiration. We like that idea that people could come back during the day and find out more about some of these things.

We have been very deliberate that darkness itself is one of the major features of the event. It is relatively easy to bring in lighting and floodlight the place, but we have tried to work in such a way that darkness is a feature, and we have been restrained in the areas that are lit – we have focused very specifically on certain places for specific reasons.

Large areas of the walk will let people experience the darkness. You probably can’t get much further away from the glow of cities anywhere in mainland Britain, but even here the darkness is not complete, and that is something that you don’t really understand until you have been out there at night and seen it.

The Forestry Commission has made two new walkways for the event which will open up an area which is not presently accessible. There is such a large network of paths in Glenmore it is actually quite easy to wander round the forest in the dark if you are brave enough, but because the paths are quite wide it is hard to get the feeling of being in the heart of the woods, and these smaller trails will allow that experience for the show.

It will be a different viewpoint and perspective on the landscape. There has been a lot of upgrading of the existing sections of the track that we are using as well, and that will also be a lasting legacy of the project. This kind of project is by definition a fleeting and transitory thing. so it would be great to leave a more lasting legacy as well.

BOB PEGG

WHEN I first met with Diane Maclean and Malcolm Innes to discuss the possibility of providing the music for the Between Two Worlds project, we sat round the kitchen table and I played them a selection of my favourite instruments – clay ocarinas, penny whistles, lyre, horns, wooden flutes, clay pot drums and panpipes.

Diane was particularly taken with the tones of the Native American Indian flute, and I think it was probably that haunting sound that got me the commission.

It’s been my job to both write and record the Between Two Worlds music. The challenge was to produce something which complemented both the magnificent landscape of Glenmore (which will be spectacularly lit for the night-time walks), and the stories which are the inspiration for the four major stations of the walk.

The first decision, and it was an easy one, was to use only “real” sounds – no electronics. The basic materials of the instruments – wood, clay, skin, gut – and their earthy timbres, happily reflected Glenmore and its droving past.
 
After this, the character of the individual pieces was determined by the stories that they were to tell: a woman sings to the rhythm of her loom; the ghosts of pine trees speak of the forest’s past; fairies dance round a huge tree; and the tales of Big Donald, the Fairy King, and the Green Lochan.

While I multitracked most of the instruments on the Between Two Worlds soundtrack, I was able to call on the invaluable help of two friends, singer Chrissie Stewart, and the harper Bill Taylor, both residents of Ross-shire.

Chrissie sings the ‘Loom Song’, a Gaelic text from Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, for which I wrote a melody. Bill plays a variety of harps – gut-strung Pictish, wire-strung Clarsach, and the Bray harp, a Renaissance instrument which makes an ethereal buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees.

There will be two versions of the Between Two Worlds music. One is to be played on the site. The other will be part of a CD featuring stories of the Cairngorms, including those which inspired Between Two Worlds.

The stories on this CD are old, traditional tales which relate not only to the woodlands, but to two of the main themes of Between Two Worlds – the unearthly and the supernatural in general, and the world of the Fairy people in particular.

The Fairies of the Scottish Highlands, the Sidhe (pronounced Shee), are nothing like the winged sprites beloved of the Victorians. One tradition says that they are fallen angels, expelled from Paradise. They can mingle with mortals, and even marry them.

They live in the Sithean, the Fairy hill, and sometimes a piper or a fiddler has been lucky enough to be welcomed inside, to listen to their incomparable music. If you do enter the Sithean, take care not to eat or drink. A taste of Fairy wine or a mouthful of their bread can make you a prisoner for eternity.

Between Two Worlds runs from 2-18 November 2007 at Glenmore Forest Park, Strathspey

© Kenny Mathieson, Diane Maclean, Malcolm Innes, Bob Pegg, 2007

Links

• Diane Maclean
• Malcolm Innes
• Bob Pegg