ABOUT
'Shifting Lines' is a new multimedia installation centred on original poetry by award-winning poet Mona Arshi. In 2020-21, Arshi undertook a residency at Norfolk Wildlife Trust's Cley and Salthouse Marshes Reserve as a part of UEA's Arts Council-funded project 'Future and Form', a
celebration of fifty years of Creative Writing at the University. This residency involved a collaboration between Arshi, public art organisation Mutiny, sound artist Peter Cusack and
photographer Matthew Usher. Between them they lifted Arshi's poems off the page and brought them back into the landscapes that had inspired them. The final work involves an ever-changing
combination of voice, sound and image that can be experienced either in the Visitor Centre exhibition space (in May and June) or out in the field as you walk around the stunning scenery of the reserve.
Arshi's poems draw on various poetic forms – among them the ancient Arabic ghazal – and are combined with cutting edge digital audio techniques such as granular synthesis to conjure haunting presences in this vibrant and elemental landscape. The way in which you experience the installation in the exhibition space will be completely singular thanks to Mutiny's use of Resolume (7) software. Video and audio inputs are actually processed in real-time using a random script while incorporating a live camera feed from one of the hides. This feeds into the installation and accompanying website, revealing this famously changing coastal landscape. This is an installation of various kinds of ‘Shifting Lines’.
Change is felt with a particular intensity in Norfolk along its coastlines. Composed largely of shale and soft clay, gently undulating sands and salt marshes, the clean line on the map of the Norfolk coast is always on the move and is coming under particular strain in response to climate change and sea-level rise. Cley Marshes nature reserve, owned and managed by Norfolk Wildife Trust, is very much on the frontline of this historic change.
Internationally renowned and protected with several conservation designations, the area comprising Cley and Salthouse Marshes, along with Blakeney Freshes and Pope’s Marsh constitute one of the largest expanses of undeveloped coastal habitats of its type in Europe. A mosaic of rare and fragile saline and freshwater habitats, it supports hundreds of species of flora and fauna, many rare or threatened and reliant on protection and careful management for their survival. These habitats are nationally and internationally recognised as vital in supporting large numbers of resident and migratory wildfowl and waders as well as bittern, marsh harrier and bearded tit.
Norfolk Wildlife Trust has over 90 years of accumulated knowledge and experience of conservation management of nationally and internationally important wildlife habitats and it all started at Cley Marshes in 1926.
Mona Arshi's poems, and the way they have been articulated in and with this place by Mutiny, are a celebration of this vulnerable and precious landscape and its wildlife.
'Shifting Lines' is one of six new works exploring the interface between contemporary literature and creative technologies commissioned by UEA's Future and Form project.
Dr Jos Smith, Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, UEA
Digital Production Partner: Mutiny
Field Recording: Peter Cusack
Sound Engineering: Sandy Nuttgens
Photography and Video: Matthew Usher
Sound Installation: Simon Poulter
Software Development: Sophie Mellor
Venue Partner: Norfolk Wildlife Trust
CHASE Researchers: Sasha Bergstrom-Katz and Wes Brown
UEA Project Lead for 'Shifting Lines': Dr Jos Smith
Future and Form UEA Project Lead: Professor Henry Sutton
Future and Form Executive Producer: Tim Wright
Mutiny is Sophie Mellor, Simon Poulter and Marcus Romer
Arshi's poems draw on various poetic forms – among them the ancient Arabic ghazal – and are combined with cutting edge digital audio techniques such as granular synthesis to conjure haunting presences in this vibrant and elemental landscape. The way in which you experience the installation in the exhibition space will be completely singular thanks to Mutiny's use of Resolume (7) software. Video and audio inputs are actually processed in real-time using a random script while incorporating a live camera feed from one of the hides. This feeds into the installation and accompanying website, revealing this famously changing coastal landscape. This is an installation of various kinds of ‘Shifting Lines’.
Change is felt with a particular intensity in Norfolk along its coastlines. Composed largely of shale and soft clay, gently undulating sands and salt marshes, the clean line on the map of the Norfolk coast is always on the move and is coming under particular strain in response to climate change and sea-level rise. Cley Marshes nature reserve, owned and managed by Norfolk Wildife Trust, is very much on the frontline of this historic change.
Internationally renowned and protected with several conservation designations, the area comprising Cley and Salthouse Marshes, along with Blakeney Freshes and Pope’s Marsh constitute one of the largest expanses of undeveloped coastal habitats of its type in Europe. A mosaic of rare and fragile saline and freshwater habitats, it supports hundreds of species of flora and fauna, many rare or threatened and reliant on protection and careful management for their survival. These habitats are nationally and internationally recognised as vital in supporting large numbers of resident and migratory wildfowl and waders as well as bittern, marsh harrier and bearded tit.
Norfolk Wildlife Trust has over 90 years of accumulated knowledge and experience of conservation management of nationally and internationally important wildlife habitats and it all started at Cley Marshes in 1926.
Mona Arshi's poems, and the way they have been articulated in and with this place by Mutiny, are a celebration of this vulnerable and precious landscape and its wildlife.
'Shifting Lines' is one of six new works exploring the interface between contemporary literature and creative technologies commissioned by UEA's Future and Form project.
Dr Jos Smith, Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, UEA
CREDITS
Writer: Mona ArshiDigital Production Partner: Mutiny
Field Recording: Peter Cusack
Sound Engineering: Sandy Nuttgens
Photography and Video: Matthew Usher
Sound Installation: Simon Poulter
Software Development: Sophie Mellor
Venue Partner: Norfolk Wildlife Trust
CHASE Researchers: Sasha Bergstrom-Katz and Wes Brown
UEA Project Lead for 'Shifting Lines': Dr Jos Smith
Future and Form UEA Project Lead: Professor Henry Sutton
Future and Form Executive Producer: Tim Wright
Mutiny is Sophie Mellor, Simon Poulter and Marcus Romer