Chris Watson: What …………………… my ear, looking at this painting… I was

imagining as much as I could, Constable in his studio in London, …………………. this

painting, maybe from childhood and it’s so full of memory the painting, even though, you
know, it has to be a contemporary scene. But it’s something that… you know, I’m sure
he did that – I’m sure he ……………………… down, pushed his face into some clear
cool ……………………….. water on his way to school or on the way home and had a
drink. You know, you can imagine yourself from this point of view looking out across the
landscape of that ……………………….. Very physical sensation you can feel, looking at
the painting, and feeling the sound and the wind on your back.

And the great thing with sound design for a painting such as this is that you can let the
sounds ………………….. and fade in the same way that you would gaze around, and
then suddenly find something to catch your eye, like that ……………………… of corn
behind what appears to me to be a dying …………………… tree. I can hear that dry
crackle and …………………., and also something that you would, you know, associate
with the dead twigs and leaves around that tree as well. And those greater wafting
sounds… that wonderful sigh and hiss of the wind sort of …………………..through the
leaves of the mature trees.

And also again the boy being attracted not only by the water but I’m sure by the sound
of it. It’s something that we all find intriguing… that beautiful sort of silvery
………………………. of sound of water which would be very enticing on a hot summer’s
day, like that, to go and bathe your face in and drink in. And then that gradual sense of
…………………. perspective, which we’re these days not that fortunate to enjoy
because of noise pollution, but we can hear sounds way off into the distance – that hiss
and sigh of the ripe ……………… seed heads and maybe a distant sky lark, which I
wanted to include in this piece. I could almost imagine it singing out of sight, way up
towards those ………………………. clouds.

And then that very distant suggestion, almost dream-like… I could imagine Constable
………………… out across that field and imagining hearing a distant church clock tower
in the distance. Something that we would never hear these days because of the way our
landscape is ………………. unfortunately with noise pollution.

My idea was to – and I presume this is one of the aims of the project – to get people to
engage with paintings for a longer period, and using sound, I think, is a really beautiful
way of doing that. It’s a ………………..of a few moments, a few minutes that happened
several centuries ago.

Miranda Hinkley (in the studio): Thanks to Chris Watson. 'Sounds of the Gallery' is
available from audio guide desks, and features work by students from the
Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, as well as sound artists Jem
Finer, Simon Fisher Turner, and David Toop.