December 13, 2023 • 32 mins
Send us a Text Message with what batty adventures you’ve been up to this summer!
S5E49 This week we join BCT member Mark Ferguson who has just released his latest album; Walking With Bats. What does it sound like to go bat detecting? From start to finish, this question has underpinned Walking with Bats. Mark's main goal throughout the album's development has been simple: to transport listeners directly to the field, placing their ears where his are so they can experience the excitement of bat detecting through their own headphones.
- Find the album on Mark's website or here on Bandcamp
- Read Mark's blog on the BCT website
- Want to find out more about bat detecting? Take a look at our guide.
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Bats are magical but misunderstood. At BCT our vision is a world rich in wildlife where bats and people thrive together. Action to protect & conserve bats is having a positive impact on bat populations in the UK. We would not be able to continue our work to protect bats & their habitats without your contribution so if you can please donate. We need your support now more than ever: www.bats.org.uk/donate Thank you!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steve Roe (00:06):
Hello BatChatters Welcome back to BatChat, the Bat
Conservation Trust podcast foranyone with a fascination in
these amazing nocturnalcreatures. I'm Steve Roe, and
this is BatChat series five.
This is our fourth episode ofSeries five and in case you
don't know by now, episodes arebeing released every other
(00:26):
Wednesday from now until springnext year. If you're new to
BatChat Welcome along. I'm SteveRoe. I'm an ecologist and in my
spare time a trustee for the BatConservation Trust. We've got
something a bit different foryou this week. Sound artist and
BCT member Mark Ferguson hasjust released his latest album
walking with bats. His main goalthroughout the album's
(00:48):
development has been simple totransport listeners directly to
the field. placing their iswhere his are so they can
experience the excitement of batsetting through their own
headphones. With marks busyschedule, we conducted this
interview over the internet butas you'll hear, we've
intertwined some snippets fromMark's album to give you a
flavour of his work. Mark, doyou want to introduce yourself?
(01:08):
And then tell us what walkingwith bats is all about?
Mark Ferguson (01:13):
Yean sure. So I'm Mark Ferguson. I'm a wildlife
sound recordist and soundartist. So my main background is
obviously in recording naturalsigns. So just finished recently
finished a PhD in this subjectat the University of Birmingham,
where I was looking at how touse wildlife signs, natural
signs in creative context. Sohe's making lots of multichannel
(01:36):
pieces, kind of puttingaudiences inside Bumblebee
nests, transporting them intosort of almost down to the sort
of ground level and kind of verydetailed, close up level of
different species. So that'skind of in a nutshell, what I
kind of do, I take naturalsigns, and I use them
creatively. I also just likerecording them in general. And
(01:57):
I've made some contributions tothe British Library, sound
archives, and I like to releasemy own albums and do my own
recording projects occasionally.
So that's what we're here totalk about. This is good, this
is good. But this drill, rightoverhead, oh, no, they're not
looking for you. I'm looking forthis laser spot to oh, I can see
it. I'm just going to run afterit here and see where it is. At
(02:21):
brilliant. Okay, so I'vepositioned myself just on the
edge of this hedge row here. SoI'm in the edge of my village,
my home village in NorthernIreland castledawson I know
these country lanes and roadsinside I'd have spent most of my
childhood exploring them flankedby honeysuckle, ash trees,
(02:42):
really dense vegetation hereEric goes there so we've got two
lasers but this is about thatgoes by a few different names
lesser knock chill is one ofthem. It's basically a small
rock jewel. But it's in the samegenus as the common NOC tool.
And they tell us and actuallythis is Nick tell this laser I
(03:05):
write echolocating on the edgeof this field, if I can just get
closer every guy just positionmyself to say this get here.
Okay, hopefully it comes back.
(03:26):
Yes, it will. There it is. SoI'm 20 by 22.4 kilohertz. It's
just the most beautiful sightit's moving. Circling around
this in fact, it's actually ahell of forts and ancient wrath,
and all hell for it. And quite afew of these positions around
(03:49):
rural mid Ulster and it's justat the very far corners, the
village boundary.
Steve Roe (04:02):
Very good. So how did you get into into wildlife sound
recording then? How did you endup in that sort of career? Well,
Mark Ferguson (04:09):
I mean, I think I suppose with most of us, I've
always had an interest innatural world from from a young
age. So it just kind of weirdbalance and childhood of about
sort of a third video games 1/3Being in the wild, and another
third of reading lots of stuff.
So that was kind of my sort offavourite activities as a kid.
But yeah, I was alwaysinterested in in wildlife and
(04:30):
music was also a very big thingfor me. So that became a real a
real interest. And so I ended upstudying music at university
level, Queen's University,Belfast, and then I did a
master's degree and by thatstage, I'd become quite
interested in the sort oftechnologies behind recording. I
was teaching myself a little bitof a little bit of programming
(04:52):
to to manipulate audio, so I useprogramming languages to to
manipulate signs I'm so he'sdoing all kinds of creative
things with signs. And then Ibecame very interested in in
field recording as well as kindof a byproduct of that. So, at
that point, I kind of came outof my, my studies and decided to
go into the professional audioindustry for a while. So I
(05:15):
worked for leading audiomanufacturer here in the UK, and
then run by two and a half yearsinto that job, I was offered
some funding to do do my PhD. Soprobably about Orion that stage,
I was really becoming veryinterested in wildlife sign
recording, I already had beenbefore that, but that was when
it kind of solidified into this,this notion of, of using of
(05:37):
exploring wildlife signs withwith an artist's kind of ear, if
you will. So that's pretty muchwhat he did throughout my whole
PhD. And the it's sort ofblossomed into, you know,
interesting kind of career as asound artist, as well. So
that's, that's, that's roughlythe path, if you will. And
Steve Roe (05:59):
you've turned your hand to bat detector now, what
is working with bats? And wheredoes that idea come from then?
Yeah,
Mark Ferguson (06:06):
so I suppose, like all good things, that it's
come out of the pandemic.
So, yeah, about, you know, early2020, it was very busy time, PhD
time, my daughter arrived, thestart of 2020, as well. And
there was obviously a lot of alot of stress, a lot of a lot of
(06:29):
things that had to be taken careof, at that time. And one of the
one of the issues that sort ofarose as a result of the the
COVID 19 situation was, youknow, how they keep recording
how they continue recordingwildlife. And so we had,
obviously, you know, permittedexercise periods, and so on. So
I sort of asked myself, well,hang on, you've got all this
gear and all this stuff, whatwould be the best thing to
(06:51):
explore an AI to kind of, toenable you to keep recording
wildlife? And the answer was,was was bad, but detecting. And
so I started I bought, I wentstraight to the good stuff, I
got a Peterson dt 40x And I wentout in the boat and just just
basically taught myself, youknow, all the frequencies to
focus on for heterodynedetecting and sort of just
(07:15):
learned it from from the bottomup pretty much and sort of got
the classic texts by John Rossand Middleton and so on. So
those are the kinds of things Ijust educated myself on as a
white left sound recordist. And,as he kind of did that, as I
kind of walked around, detectingI was looking for materials that
would sort of convey the thenarrative aspect I'm really
(07:37):
interested in, in, instorytelling and in narrative,
and in, in the emotional andkind of the creative aspects of
craft, and I was looking formaterial that would convey this.
And there's sort of one or twoalbums and things out there that
I find there was an album bythink Mr. McAleenan, Zita, where
she uses bad signs in sort of,in a compositional context. I
(08:01):
think this is Stuart hired todesign did an album, using
ultrasound and so on, but Icouldn't really find really that
much that focused on on the kindof the craft of birth detecting
and your what's it like toactually be in the field with
the detector, you know, and, youknow, what's it like to
experience that? And I thought,well, wouldn't it be cool to do
(08:22):
a project that would encapsulatethat and sort of convey that to
the listener at home. And sothat kind of that was kind of
the seed was kind of plantedthere that kind of rattled
around in the back of my headfor a while. So I kind of ran
with that I finished the PhD,survive that. And, and shortly
(08:43):
after I thought, you know, I'llsort of throw this into the Arts
Council and see what I can do.
So they have a scheme, the ArtsCouncil, Arts Council, England,
have a scheme called anddeveloping your creative
practice, the vicp. One of thethings I hadn't really narrated
any of my work before I hadn'treally done that. So I thought,
you know, it'd be nice tochallenge myself to actually, to
(09:04):
go down the kind of, almost kindof sort of cliche podcast route
of telling a story of narratingyour experiences, but also
focusing very firmly on thecraft of architecting. And, and
trying to bring the listener outinto the field with me, if you
will. So I threw that over tothe Arts Council and explained
that, you know, I wanted todevelop myself in that way, and
(09:25):
they got the funding for it, andthat enabled the project to
really take off. So it's prettymuch an album of bad detections
of of bad detecting trips, witha little with some bonus tracks
thrown in at the end and justthe kind of recordings
themselves, and a little kind ofstudio interlude where I reflect
on on what I've recorded in theprevious year. It's lasers is
(09:48):
just circling around. This isabout that's really fun with
pastors. This is quite a fewthese fields have been recently
cut and spread the slurry. Andthere are some cows grazing in
the fields opposite so it's verymuch about the farmland here and
(10:14):
they will tend to feed on maybedung flies. Probably maths and
so on, on the edges of thesefields, so this part is really
flying quite fast. I would sayeasily about 2530 kilometres per
hour at the moment is movingreally quickly back and forth on
(10:37):
the edge of this field.
Steve Roe (10:40):
For new mentioned there, you've got Pettersen D
240. X, how steep was thelearning curve? And why did you
choose that detector? Have youdone the have you done the
tracks using hedge Stein? Haveyou gone for the time expansion
element?
Mark Ferguson (10:54):
So the answer well, both are quite both cases,
no. So I have a dt 40x. Butthat's, that's a little bitty.
So I actually did everythingwith the D 1,000x. Which is sort
of very much a Rolls Royce. Ofbug detectors. Not cheap either.
But I was fortunate enough toactually got a secondhand one
from a lovely chap in Somerset.
I think he'd actually bought itand he'd never he'd used it, I
(11:18):
think like three times in. Andhe took a completely different
career direction. So it wasbasically brand new, and I got
it for for half of what hedidn't pay for it. So it was
very good deal. So I went homesort of skipping home that day.
But yeah, I did the whole I justfigured this is this is a really
interesting project. So I gotthe the best possible detector I
(11:39):
could find. And I was reallyconcerned with with sound
quality there. So to my ears, atleast, the the you know, the D
1000 acts as a bat detector is avery, very, you know, it's as
good as it gets for Sonicquality for me. And that, of
course enables a bunch ofdifferent things heterodyne you
know, frequency division, timeexpansion, full spectrum,
whatever you want. So yeah, thatwas the, that was the detector
(12:03):
of choice, in terms of learningcurve is a lot to learn for that
detector. But you know, Isuppose the other disadvantage
of it's quite, it's quitechunky. It's quite a big
detector to hold in the field.
But it was basically able tomind a small omnidirectional
microphone in the side. And thatallowed me then to generate and
(12:24):
sort of broadcast quality what Iwas doing in the field,
Steve Roe (12:28):
or have tried it myself and with the podcast kit
and then with about stature andit gets quite unwieldy the
amount of cables around us.
Yeah,
Mark Ferguson (12:37):
it does. Yeah, you can, I mean, I'm quite
understood. I mean, I thinkevery wildlife sound recordist
will will tell you that there'salways some little tweak or
modification to make with thedetector and a new one record is
free with the sim detector. Forexample, He's just put a little
kind of like a little knob orlike a little kind of rubber
(12:59):
sticky pad on the full spectrumrecording key just so we can
find it in the dark withouthaving to look down so just
little kind of tweaks like that.
So I've I kind of hackedtogether a way to mind this on
the mic onto the omnidirectionalmicrophone onto the D 1,000x.
didn't look too good but itworked quite well for the
project. And
Steve Roe (13:19):
whereabouts have you done the walks I know the clip
you sent was from homeland inIreland but whereabouts are the
other the other ones? Yeah,
Mark Ferguson (13:27):
so as you said I'm from Northern Ireland as you
said so there's a little bit ofa focus there kind of about a
third of the way through theproject I went back home and
recorded there for a little bitwhich was fantastic but most of
the focus if I got all of theother focuses has basically been
in the southwest of Englandwhich is fantastic but detecting
(13:47):
territory anyway because youknow you've got pretty much all
resident species is I can't seeI can't see it this is one of
the problems of five to 10 Therewe go. Okay just pass straight
across my course there is an upand down here to get the the
(14:11):
strongest frequency let's go on.
Shooting around 46 is good 46 isgood for this. We got one common
pet distro moving back and forthbetween to pass my head between
T LED streetlights. I can'tbelieve they're out in such
(14:33):
windy conditions. I mean thetrees are just swaying above me
here. I've got at least one Ididn't know if there are too
many thing about thesebatteries, they just they're so
(14:56):
small. I think maybe three orfour centimetres long. And they
weigh in at about probablybetween three to seven or eight
grammes. And to put that incontext that's about, it's about
the same weight as a teaspoonfull of sugar. So they're truly
light, very small animals, andincredibly dexterous. So that
(15:18):
flight they just witnessedthere. It's always amazing to
watch the flip, twist, turn, buthave membranous wings, not
feathered ones like birds. Sothat means they can pretty much
turn on a dime on a penny reallyquickly, and they can just do
the most amazing aerobaticflips, I've not been super lucky
(15:40):
is to get the likes of Barbrastyle, for example. Or, you
know, some of the mean sort ofgrey long haired bats out of the
question, you know, to figurethat out in the field is not
really a possibility, even Brianlong beard, but to be honest
with you, they're just sodifficult to detect. They're
such, they're such a delicateanchor location. Haven't really
(16:01):
got those, but it's pretty muchbeen in the southwest of England
areas around the Cotswolds notfar off the river, river Severn.
Those kinds of places, placesthat I know. Well, places which
are kind of places with acapital P to me, so they mean
something to me, I've been, I'vebeen to them before I've
recorded around them before. AndI kind of had a good sense of
(16:24):
what I could get there. I mean,there were a whole bunch of
surprises in the project aswell. But that was the that was
the main focus.
Steve Roe (16:31):
And how long ago did you move from Ireland to Bristol
them?
Mark Ferguson (16:35):
So I've been here? Probably, gosh, let me
think. But about seven years,and I've been here, my wife and
I have been here. My wife's fromPoland. And then from Northern
Ireland. We actually met inManchester. Very romantic story,
but we have a little daughter,she's growing up here too. So
yeah, I've been here about sevenyears or so. And it's just it's
(16:57):
a fantastic spot. Obviously, fornatural history, kind of work in
general. But you know, in termsof hooking up with other sound
recordist and so on there, youknow, there's opportunity there
too. And, yeah, it's just theweather's generally speaking a
bit better than in back home inNorthern Ireland. Although not
that much, you know, it's it'snot particularly reliable. But,
(17:21):
you know, for bats, it's a bitwarmer, it's a bit. It's a bit
more useful for bath detecting,let's say, and
Steve Roe (17:28):
with growing up in Ireland, obviously, there are no
nachos over there. It's justlies, Liz, it went when you came
over you now really, reallyeasily able to tell the
difference between nachos orlike enlightens? Or is it still
a bit of a challenge? No,
Mark Ferguson (17:43):
generally speaking, because lasers, it's
not really that you know, it'snowhere near as common as my
understanding anyway, as the asthe NOC tool here, but just I
mean, just knowing yourfrequencies like this was
something I kind of drilled intomyself from the ground up. So
NOC chill, just rememberingstuff like 1924, you know, for
the two kinds of places to bewith the heterodyne tunings, and
(18:04):
then you know, lasers at the VA2327 ish, for those kinds of to
call kind of variant variants,the sort of QC F and then FM QC
F. So just knowing thefrequencies and going through
those like those two, what Icall sort of bottom species down
at the bottom, of course, you'vegot the common and soprano
pipistrelle social callshappening down there too. Which,
you know, if you're startingout, you have to be aware of and
(18:25):
then just, you know, we're goingfarther up the spectrum into
sort of, well, serotoninterritory 2627 28, and then
Brian longbeards, sort of 33ish, and that's the easiest in
the higher sort of 30s, and thenmid 40s, common pet, mid 50s,
Soprano, Pepin all the way up toa greater horseshoe at one
lesser horseshoe 111. And you'vegot the male species, which are
(18:47):
just, let's just leave loose outof it unless you see them or
unless you take them home andreally kind of full stack them
on a on a spectrogram. At some,it's tough. And even then, you
know, actually, it was like theother day in the car tools and
sheeps come, which is absolutelybeautiful spot and the Gospels
and recorded and they noticedspecies and have to say put it
through spectrogram. And I waslooking at those calls. And I
(19:11):
thought, you know, that's anabandoned, but but it wasn't
really behaving like a Tibetansat all it was just flying around
at my sort of head height, awayfrom water, it wasn't anywhere
near a water body. Okay, so thatthat really looks like a
dependency that looks sort ofkinky around 40 kilohertz. And
then I was kind of looking atsomething but hang on, it's not
really it's more of a whiskeredkind of situation, as I couldn't
(19:34):
figure out I just put my eldestspecies it's so tough to get
this this virus species down toeven with I would argue even
with like a full spec. I thinkthat's where AI is definitely
going to help us out there inthe future a little bit.
Steve Roe (19:48):
Yeah, definitely. I have to say I still struggle
with splitting the Myotis.
Certainly. What sort ofchallenges have you had along
the way? Were there any
Mark Ferguson (19:57):
lots of challenges? Yeah. To be on was
was the part of the challengewas just as I said, I was sort
of I did this project to developmy kind of narration
capabilities. And I like tospeak about my work, I like to
have a chat with people. ButI've done quite a few
presentations. But this was kindof different. And there's a lot
to talk about here. But I'm notget into a lot of it sort of
(20:20):
about the sort of investment ofthe Recordist in the field and
what that means for white leftsound recording. But that was
the kind of first main challengewas learning how to, to read and
just kind of to do it naturallynot to kind of come in with sort
of an artificial kind offramework there. Because people
can kind of tell you know, ifyour attendees, you sort of have
(20:41):
pre rehearsed stuff, so I justwant it all to be natural, I
just literally just planned thetrips overnight with the
detector, just some kind of justto see what I could find pretty
much. You know, a lot of theother challenges were things
like anthropogenic noise. So Iwent to fantastic spot in
(21:02):
Arlington, it's just around thatsort of portion of the
sovereign, where it kind ofcurves around, just kind of
opposite, just beside wheels andthe sort of southwest of
England. And, you know, therewas a lot of farming activity
happening around the field. So Ikind of had to go back a second
time to get something usefulthere. And that, I mean, I would
(21:23):
say those were the kind of thetwo main challenges also just
just remembering, you know, Italked about the frequencies and
stuff and just knowing what,where to be at with the
heterodyne detector, but justremembering that when you're
trying to narrow it, you know,it's also a challenge. I mean,
people don't really realise howdifficult it can be to talk
about what you're doing asyou're doing it. So that was
(21:44):
interesting. And you know, justyou think that you would say oh,
yeah, you know, I'm kind of at26 kilohertz at the moment and
stuff and did you then try andremember if you actually said
that if you did like that Did Idid I say something completely
wrong there just little thingslike that. But in the end it
just kind of abandoned all thoseworries and went with it. I just
(22:06):
thought there was somethingup to 111 No, that's 81 that was
at a greater was that a greaterhorseshoe but I honestly I think
that was that was a greaterhorseshoe bought. Right. Elif is
(22:31):
very macro. That's literally agreater horseshoe, but I have
never recorded a greaterhorseshoe bot. Ever. Just
kidding. I can't believe that.
So I was tuning around 40 Yeah,that makes absolute sense. It
was a bit 40. Yeah. At 1am oddone, no. There are literally
(22:57):
greater horseshoe bots. I can'tbelieve that here. I was not
aware of there must be a wristnearby somewhere. But
that's pipistrelle to do onceyou. I don't want you anymore.
pipistrelle. I can't believethat. So I was tuning around 40
(23:17):
kilohertz, that's gonna be thefundamental of that species. So
the horseshoe bots, thestrongest frequencies like the
second harmonic, which isessentially twice the the
fundamental frequency. I can'treally explain that No, but it's
not the strongest frequency butit for a greater horseshit would
be run 40 kilohertz, and that'sjust where I caught it. What's
(23:42):
that? No. Is that maybe thereturn of the ceratonia? It's
all kicking off now. And, youknow, to be honest, the the main
goal Steve is to is just to kindof get people Well, the main
question I asked myself was,What if you can't get out to
(24:02):
detect? You know, it's okay,talking about being a weightless
sound recordist and, you know,we talk about these adventures
in Bath detecting, and even youknow, as researchers, and if
you're doing ecological work,you know, getting out quote,
unquote, in the field, and, andgetting out there and, you know,
putting on a pair of hikingboots, and off you go, but what,
what, there's a question ofaccess there. And this has kind
(24:23):
of become quite a hot topic inconservation recently, as well,
along with diversity and so on.
And I just, I asked myself, ifpeople can physically get out
into the field, then how do theyenjoy by detecting and and how
can Can I convey that experienceto them? And so that was kind of
a main question underpinning theproject along with, you know,
(24:44):
what, you know, it'd be nice tojust do a narrative project as
well and explore the narrativeaspect of it, but that was kind
of an underpinning thing. And sothat was something I kind of
went forward with, through thewhole thing.
Steve Roe (24:58):
Yeah, I mean, it's really Nice idea. And I have to
say when I, when you sent overthe, the example track of all
this is really, really wellproduced. Speaking of
anthropogenic noise asaeroplanes is the one thing that
gets me on Batchat all the timeand happens, just pause for a
minute, we'll have somethinggoes over. So, you've mentioned
you're missing a few species,understandably, you've said
(25:20):
there's eight walks on the albumplus the studio interlink
roughly how long then is eachwalk. So
Mark Ferguson (25:30):
that's kind of a difficult one, I've got some
walks, probably, I would say,around the 10 minute mark, and
other ones might be stretchingtowards 20 minutes, I'd say
maybe an average between sort of10 and 15 minutes to kind of
condense the material down intoa sort of digestible format. But
again, it was just kind offiguring out what, what the best
(25:53):
sort of length is for people tokind of, to have. And, you know,
the other issue that we'refacing, at the moment more
broadly, in the arts, and itsort of across the spectrum, I
suppose with with podcast isattention span, because that has
just dropped off off the chart,unfortunately. And you know, a
lot of people particularly andyounger folks, they just want
(26:15):
something that's immediatelydigestible, that's immediately
accessible. And if it's notinteresting, it's, there's often
not a lot of time given to letit sort of develop. So I just I
kind of wanted to go ingenerally speaking, the shorter
route, like making things alittle bit more condensed, a
little bit more accessible. Youknow, I have three, the project
(26:38):
that kind of have my three and ahalf year old daughter in mind
as well. So I kind of askedmyself, well, what would she
say, What would she put herselfthrough? But what would she kind
of enjoy? What would she enjoylistening to? If they kind of
brought it home to you and said,you know, you know, hey, like,
Would you like to check this,this sort of these bad signs
out? So I've tried to keep itfairly snappy, and you know,
(27:00):
good, fun, and just something asaccessible as possible. Really?
Steve Roe (27:05):
Yeah, absolutely. And apart from regional, those
people who also happen, thiswill encourage people to
actually get out there withtheir detectors as well, if
they're able.
Mark Ferguson (27:13):
Absolutely. And I think this is a broader thing as
well. You know, we talk a lotabout inspiring the younger
generation of naturalists inthis country and, and farther
afield. And there are a lot ofmisconceptions about about
younger folks, I think, and I'mjust again, speaking as a father
myself, you know, I kind of grewup with, sort of, as I mentioned
(27:38):
to you, before we had thispodcast, it's sort of this kind
of weird situation of about 1/3,playing video games, 1/3 being
ICT in the natural world, and1/3 reading books. And, you
know, that's kind of aninteresting balance to have. And
I think it's quite a healthybalance. And to be honest with
you. A lot of there's a lot ofmisconception about screen time
(28:01):
as well. So in terms ofinspiring people to get out
there, because a lot of that'sactually useful. And it's I
think it's a bit unfair to saythat, you know, if kids or
younger folks especially want toget interested in natural
history, and wildlife signrecording, in ecology, whatever.
There's a lot of ecology andwildlife and natural
(28:21):
surroundings in, for example,video games. At the moment, this
is something I'm looking atcreatively as well as a sound
artist and one of my areas offocus that was looking at how
video games can be used toalmost kind of construct natural
environments in a concertsituation. mean a lot of games
that I've played in the past,have superbly rendered non
(28:42):
natural environments. And, and,frankly, this is perhaps more
unfortunate, unfortunate,they're, they're free if
anthropogenic disturbance, youknow, tractors and so on, unless
they're supposed to be a part ofthe game. So they're almost
sadly more pristine. And in somecases more enjoyable than the
natural environments that wehave. No, because a lot of them
(29:04):
are frankly, completely pollutedby by anthropogenic noise.
Having said that, and maybegoing off in a little bit of a
tangent here. But having saidthat, there's a lot to be gained
from recording in suburban andurban environment and this is
something that bought the techthing lends itself to and a lot
of people forget this that inthe wildlife sound recording
(29:24):
community especially there's alot of focus on getting pristine
recordings and sort of effacingthe Recordist and having a very
objective experience portrayedto folks so with bad detecting a
lot of the disturbance becauseyou're dealing with with
ultrasound is just not even thatmuch of an issue. Of course you
have other problems likeinterference and so on if you're
(29:46):
tuning with the heterodynedetector, but a lot of that kind
of goes away. And so most of alot of my recordings and not
just a bunch of other speciesthat interesting ones recently
have been made in in built upenvironments and And that's
something that I find reallyinteresting about the project,
I've been able to do theseexplorations, particularly
(30:07):
around my homeland back inNorthern Ireland and
castledawson in areas that youknow, they're quite busy. But
there's still a lot of story.
There's a lot of humanity. AndI've even on a couple of
occasions in the project, I'veactually encountered some people
in the field, and we've talkedabout the project. And that kind
of was very naturally, verynaturally fit into the, into the
framework as well. So anotherbonus about the typing is, it
(30:31):
looks a bit weird when you'reout at night, or in the evenings
with this kind of thing in yourhand, which most people think is
a phone initially. And then, youknow, people ask you questions
about it, and you get to talk tothem about, you know, how cool
bats are really. And so theprojects open up a lot of stuff
like that,
Steve Roe (30:50):
as well. Brilliant.
And we've heard snippets asyou've been talking on the
episodes, Mark, it soundsabsolutely fantastic. Finally,
where can people find it?
Mark Ferguson (31:01):
So it's going to be on Bandcamp. If you just
Google walking with bots, andBandcamp, they'll probably throw
it back. If you can't get itthrough Bandcamp. You can go
straight to my website, which isMark Ferguson audio, all one
word, Mark Ferguson, audio.com,or just Google Mark Ferguson
audio, you've probably, youknow, it should hopefully be
(31:22):
available sort of be have beenpromoted and kind of talked
about elsewhere. But those arethe two main channels. So
Bandcamp or you can go straightto my website, Mark Ferguson
audio to get a hold of it.
Steve Roe (31:33):
And we'll put a link to both of those in the show
notes. Mark, it's been fantastictalking to you. Thank you very
much.
Mark Ferguson (31:38):
Greatly appreciate it. Steve, thank you.
Steve Roe (31:40):
A huge thanks to Mark for taking the time to do the
interview you've just heard andfor allowing us to use his clips
from his new album walking withthat. You can find marks album
in the show notes along withlinks to his website and a blog.
He's recently written on the BCTwebsite. I hope you've enjoyed
this instalment of series fiveplease tell the world about Bat
Chat on your social mediachannels. And we'll be back in
(32:01):
two weeks time. See you then.
Hello BatChatters Welcome back to BatChat, the Bat
Conservation Trust podcast foranyone with a fascination in
these amazing nocturnalcreatures. I'm Steve Roe, and
this is BatChat series five.
This is our fourth episode ofSeries five and in case you
don't know by now, episodes arebeing released every other
(00:26):
Wednesday from now until springnext year. If you're new to
BatChat Welcome along. I'm SteveRoe. I'm an ecologist and in my
spare time a trustee for the BatConservation Trust. We've got
something a bit different foryou this week. Sound artist and
BCT member Mark Ferguson hasjust released his latest album
walking with bats. His main goalthroughout the album's
(00:48):
development has been simple totransport listeners directly to
the field. placing their iswhere his are so they can
experience the excitement of batsetting through their own
headphones. With marks busyschedule, we conducted this
interview over the internet butas you'll hear, we've
intertwined some snippets fromMark's album to give you a
flavour of his work. Mark, doyou want to introduce yourself?
(01:08):
And then tell us what walkingwith bats is all about?
Mark Ferguson (01:13):
Yean sure. So I'm Mark Ferguson. I'm a wildlife
sound recordist and soundartist. So my main background is
obviously in recording naturalsigns. So just finished recently
finished a PhD in this subjectat the University of Birmingham,
where I was looking at how touse wildlife signs, natural
signs in creative context. Sohe's making lots of multichannel
(01:36):
pieces, kind of puttingaudiences inside Bumblebee
nests, transporting them intosort of almost down to the sort
of ground level and kind of verydetailed, close up level of
different species. So that'skind of in a nutshell, what I
kind of do, I take naturalsigns, and I use them
creatively. I also just likerecording them in general. And
(01:57):
I've made some contributions tothe British Library, sound
archives, and I like to releasemy own albums and do my own
recording projects occasionally.
So that's what we're here totalk about. This is good, this
is good. But this drill, rightoverhead, oh, no, they're not
looking for you. I'm looking forthis laser spot to oh, I can see
it. I'm just going to run afterit here and see where it is. At
(02:21):
brilliant. Okay, so I'vepositioned myself just on the
edge of this hedge row here. SoI'm in the edge of my village,
my home village in NorthernIreland castledawson I know
these country lanes and roadsinside I'd have spent most of my
childhood exploring them flankedby honeysuckle, ash trees,
(02:42):
really dense vegetation hereEric goes there so we've got two
lasers but this is about thatgoes by a few different names
lesser knock chill is one ofthem. It's basically a small
rock jewel. But it's in the samegenus as the common NOC tool.
And they tell us and actuallythis is Nick tell this laser I
(03:05):
write echolocating on the edgeof this field, if I can just get
closer every guy just positionmyself to say this get here.
Okay, hopefully it comes back.
(03:26):
Yes, it will. There it is. SoI'm 20 by 22.4 kilohertz. It's
just the most beautiful sightit's moving. Circling around
this in fact, it's actually ahell of forts and ancient wrath,
and all hell for it. And quite afew of these positions around
(03:49):
rural mid Ulster and it's justat the very far corners, the
village boundary.
Steve Roe (04:02):
Very good. So how did you get into into wildlife sound
recording then? How did you endup in that sort of career? Well,
Mark Ferguson (04:09):
I mean, I think I suppose with most of us, I've
always had an interest innatural world from from a young
age. So it just kind of weirdbalance and childhood of about
sort of a third video games 1/3Being in the wild, and another
third of reading lots of stuff.
So that was kind of my sort offavourite activities as a kid.
But yeah, I was alwaysinterested in in wildlife and
(04:30):
music was also a very big thingfor me. So that became a real a
real interest. And so I ended upstudying music at university
level, Queen's University,Belfast, and then I did a
master's degree and by thatstage, I'd become quite
interested in the sort oftechnologies behind recording. I
was teaching myself a little bitof a little bit of programming
(04:52):
to to manipulate audio, so I useprogramming languages to to
manipulate signs I'm so he'sdoing all kinds of creative
things with signs. And then Ibecame very interested in in
field recording as well as kindof a byproduct of that. So, at
that point, I kind of came outof my, my studies and decided to
go into the professional audioindustry for a while. So I
(05:15):
worked for leading audiomanufacturer here in the UK, and
then run by two and a half yearsinto that job, I was offered
some funding to do do my PhD. Soprobably about Orion that stage,
I was really becoming veryinterested in wildlife sign
recording, I already had beenbefore that, but that was when
it kind of solidified into this,this notion of, of using of
(05:37):
exploring wildlife signs withwith an artist's kind of ear, if
you will. So that's pretty muchwhat he did throughout my whole
PhD. And the it's sort ofblossomed into, you know,
interesting kind of career as asound artist, as well. So
that's, that's, that's roughlythe path, if you will. And
Steve Roe (05:59):
you've turned your hand to bat detector now, what
is working with bats? And wheredoes that idea come from then?
Yeah,
Mark Ferguson (06:06):
so I suppose, like all good things, that it's
come out of the pandemic.
So, yeah, about, you know, early2020, it was very busy time, PhD
time, my daughter arrived, thestart of 2020, as well. And
there was obviously a lot of alot of stress, a lot of a lot of
(06:29):
things that had to be taken careof, at that time. And one of the
one of the issues that sort ofarose as a result of the the
COVID 19 situation was, youknow, how they keep recording
how they continue recordingwildlife. And so we had,
obviously, you know, permittedexercise periods, and so on. So
I sort of asked myself, well,hang on, you've got all this
gear and all this stuff, whatwould be the best thing to
(06:51):
explore an AI to kind of, toenable you to keep recording
wildlife? And the answer was,was was bad, but detecting. And
so I started I bought, I wentstraight to the good stuff, I
got a Peterson dt 40x And I wentout in the boat and just just
basically taught myself, youknow, all the frequencies to
focus on for heterodynedetecting and sort of just
(07:15):
learned it from from the bottomup pretty much and sort of got
the classic texts by John Rossand Middleton and so on. So
those are the kinds of things Ijust educated myself on as a
white left sound recordist. And,as he kind of did that, as I
kind of walked around, detectingI was looking for materials that
would sort of convey the thenarrative aspect I'm really
(07:37):
interested in, in, instorytelling and in narrative,
and in, in the emotional andkind of the creative aspects of
craft, and I was looking formaterial that would convey this.
And there's sort of one or twoalbums and things out there that
I find there was an album bythink Mr. McAleenan, Zita, where
she uses bad signs in sort of,in a compositional context. I
(08:01):
think this is Stuart hired todesign did an album, using
ultrasound and so on, but Icouldn't really find really that
much that focused on on the kindof the craft of birth detecting
and your what's it like toactually be in the field with
the detector, you know, and, youknow, what's it like to
experience that? And I thought,well, wouldn't it be cool to do
(08:22):
a project that would encapsulatethat and sort of convey that to
the listener at home. And sothat kind of that was kind of
the seed was kind of plantedthere that kind of rattled
around in the back of my headfor a while. So I kind of ran
with that I finished the PhD,survive that. And, and shortly
(08:43):
after I thought, you know, I'llsort of throw this into the Arts
Council and see what I can do.
So they have a scheme, the ArtsCouncil, Arts Council, England,
have a scheme called anddeveloping your creative
practice, the vicp. One of thethings I hadn't really narrated
any of my work before I hadn'treally done that. So I thought,
you know, it'd be nice tochallenge myself to actually, to
(09:04):
go down the kind of, almost kindof sort of cliche podcast route
of telling a story of narratingyour experiences, but also
focusing very firmly on thecraft of architecting. And, and
trying to bring the listener outinto the field with me, if you
will. So I threw that over tothe Arts Council and explained
that, you know, I wanted todevelop myself in that way, and
(09:25):
they got the funding for it, andthat enabled the project to
really take off. So it's prettymuch an album of bad detections
of of bad detecting trips, witha little with some bonus tracks
thrown in at the end and justthe kind of recordings
themselves, and a little kind ofstudio interlude where I reflect
on on what I've recorded in theprevious year. It's lasers is
(09:48):
just circling around. This isabout that's really fun with
pastors. This is quite a fewthese fields have been recently
cut and spread the slurry. Andthere are some cows grazing in
the fields opposite so it's verymuch about the farmland here and
(10:14):
they will tend to feed on maybedung flies. Probably maths and
so on, on the edges of thesefields, so this part is really
flying quite fast. I would sayeasily about 2530 kilometres per
hour at the moment is movingreally quickly back and forth on
(10:37):
the edge of this field.
Steve Roe (10:40):
For new mentioned there, you've got Pettersen D
240. X, how steep was thelearning curve? And why did you
choose that detector? Have youdone the have you done the
tracks using hedge Stein? Haveyou gone for the time expansion
element?
Mark Ferguson (10:54):
So the answer well, both are quite both cases,
no. So I have a dt 40x. Butthat's, that's a little bitty.
So I actually did everythingwith the D 1,000x. Which is sort
of very much a Rolls Royce. Ofbug detectors. Not cheap either.
But I was fortunate enough toactually got a secondhand one
from a lovely chap in Somerset.
I think he'd actually bought itand he'd never he'd used it, I
(11:18):
think like three times in. Andhe took a completely different
career direction. So it wasbasically brand new, and I got
it for for half of what hedidn't pay for it. So it was
very good deal. So I went homesort of skipping home that day.
But yeah, I did the whole I justfigured this is this is a really
interesting project. So I gotthe the best possible detector I
(11:39):
could find. And I was reallyconcerned with with sound
quality there. So to my ears, atleast, the the you know, the D
1000 acts as a bat detector is avery, very, you know, it's as
good as it gets for Sonicquality for me. And that, of
course enables a bunch ofdifferent things heterodyne you
know, frequency division, timeexpansion, full spectrum,
whatever you want. So yeah, thatwas the, that was the detector
(12:03):
of choice, in terms of learningcurve is a lot to learn for that
detector. But you know, Isuppose the other disadvantage
of it's quite, it's quitechunky. It's quite a big
detector to hold in the field.
But it was basically able tomind a small omnidirectional
microphone in the side. And thatallowed me then to generate and
(12:24):
sort of broadcast quality what Iwas doing in the field,
Steve Roe (12:28):
or have tried it myself and with the podcast kit
and then with about stature andit gets quite unwieldy the
amount of cables around us.
Yeah,
Mark Ferguson (12:37):
it does. Yeah, you can, I mean, I'm quite
understood. I mean, I thinkevery wildlife sound recordist
will will tell you that there'salways some little tweak or
modification to make with thedetector and a new one record is
free with the sim detector. Forexample, He's just put a little
kind of like a little knob orlike a little kind of rubber
(12:59):
sticky pad on the full spectrumrecording key just so we can
find it in the dark withouthaving to look down so just
little kind of tweaks like that.
So I've I kind of hackedtogether a way to mind this on
the mic onto the omnidirectionalmicrophone onto the D 1,000x.
didn't look too good but itworked quite well for the
project. And
Steve Roe (13:19):
whereabouts have you done the walks I know the clip
you sent was from homeland inIreland but whereabouts are the
other the other ones? Yeah,
Mark Ferguson (13:27):
so as you said I'm from Northern Ireland as you
said so there's a little bit ofa focus there kind of about a
third of the way through theproject I went back home and
recorded there for a little bitwhich was fantastic but most of
the focus if I got all of theother focuses has basically been
in the southwest of Englandwhich is fantastic but detecting
(13:47):
territory anyway because youknow you've got pretty much all
resident species is I can't seeI can't see it this is one of
the problems of five to 10 Therewe go. Okay just pass straight
across my course there is an upand down here to get the the
(14:11):
strongest frequency let's go on.
Shooting around 46 is good 46 isgood for this. We got one common
pet distro moving back and forthbetween to pass my head between
T LED streetlights. I can'tbelieve they're out in such
(14:33):
windy conditions. I mean thetrees are just swaying above me
here. I've got at least one Ididn't know if there are too
many thing about thesebatteries, they just they're so
(14:56):
small. I think maybe three orfour centimetres long. And they
weigh in at about probablybetween three to seven or eight
grammes. And to put that incontext that's about, it's about
the same weight as a teaspoonfull of sugar. So they're truly
light, very small animals, andincredibly dexterous. So that
(15:18):
flight they just witnessedthere. It's always amazing to
watch the flip, twist, turn, buthave membranous wings, not
feathered ones like birds. Sothat means they can pretty much
turn on a dime on a penny reallyquickly, and they can just do
the most amazing aerobaticflips, I've not been super lucky
(15:40):
is to get the likes of Barbrastyle, for example. Or, you
know, some of the mean sort ofgrey long haired bats out of the
question, you know, to figurethat out in the field is not
really a possibility, even Brianlong beard, but to be honest
with you, they're just sodifficult to detect. They're
such, they're such a delicateanchor location. Haven't really
(16:01):
got those, but it's pretty muchbeen in the southwest of England
areas around the Cotswolds notfar off the river, river Severn.
Those kinds of places, placesthat I know. Well, places which
are kind of places with acapital P to me, so they mean
something to me, I've been, I'vebeen to them before I've
recorded around them before. AndI kind of had a good sense of
(16:24):
what I could get there. I mean,there were a whole bunch of
surprises in the project aswell. But that was the that was
the main focus.
Steve Roe (16:31):
And how long ago did you move from Ireland to Bristol
them?
Mark Ferguson (16:35):
So I've been here? Probably, gosh, let me
think. But about seven years,and I've been here, my wife and
I have been here. My wife's fromPoland. And then from Northern
Ireland. We actually met inManchester. Very romantic story,
but we have a little daughter,she's growing up here too. So
yeah, I've been here about sevenyears or so. And it's just it's
(16:57):
a fantastic spot. Obviously, fornatural history, kind of work in
general. But you know, in termsof hooking up with other sound
recordist and so on there, youknow, there's opportunity there
too. And, yeah, it's just theweather's generally speaking a
bit better than in back home inNorthern Ireland. Although not
that much, you know, it's it'snot particularly reliable. But,
(17:21):
you know, for bats, it's a bitwarmer, it's a bit. It's a bit
more useful for bath detecting,let's say, and
Steve Roe (17:28):
with growing up in Ireland, obviously, there are no
nachos over there. It's justlies, Liz, it went when you came
over you now really, reallyeasily able to tell the
difference between nachos orlike enlightens? Or is it still
a bit of a challenge? No,
Mark Ferguson (17:43):
generally speaking, because lasers, it's
not really that you know, it'snowhere near as common as my
understanding anyway, as the asthe NOC tool here, but just I
mean, just knowing yourfrequencies like this was
something I kind of drilled intomyself from the ground up. So
NOC chill, just rememberingstuff like 1924, you know, for
the two kinds of places to bewith the heterodyne tunings, and
(18:04):
then you know, lasers at the VA2327 ish, for those kinds of to
call kind of variant variants,the sort of QC F and then FM QC
F. So just knowing thefrequencies and going through
those like those two, what Icall sort of bottom species down
at the bottom, of course, you'vegot the common and soprano
pipistrelle social callshappening down there too. Which,
you know, if you're startingout, you have to be aware of and
(18:25):
then just, you know, we're goingfarther up the spectrum into
sort of, well, serotoninterritory 2627 28, and then
Brian longbeards, sort of 33ish, and that's the easiest in
the higher sort of 30s, and thenmid 40s, common pet, mid 50s,
Soprano, Pepin all the way up toa greater horseshoe at one
lesser horseshoe 111. And you'vegot the male species, which are
(18:47):
just, let's just leave loose outof it unless you see them or
unless you take them home andreally kind of full stack them
on a on a spectrogram. At some,it's tough. And even then, you
know, actually, it was like theother day in the car tools and
sheeps come, which is absolutelybeautiful spot and the Gospels
and recorded and they noticedspecies and have to say put it
through spectrogram. And I waslooking at those calls. And I
(19:11):
thought, you know, that's anabandoned, but but it wasn't
really behaving like a Tibetansat all it was just flying around
at my sort of head height, awayfrom water, it wasn't anywhere
near a water body. Okay, so thatthat really looks like a
dependency that looks sort ofkinky around 40 kilohertz. And
then I was kind of looking atsomething but hang on, it's not
really it's more of a whiskeredkind of situation, as I couldn't
(19:34):
figure out I just put my eldestspecies it's so tough to get
this this virus species down toeven with I would argue even
with like a full spec. I thinkthat's where AI is definitely
going to help us out there inthe future a little bit.
Steve Roe (19:48):
Yeah, definitely. I have to say I still struggle
with splitting the Myotis.
Certainly. What sort ofchallenges have you had along
the way? Were there any
Mark Ferguson (19:57):
lots of challenges? Yeah. To be on was
was the part of the challengewas just as I said, I was sort
of I did this project to developmy kind of narration
capabilities. And I like tospeak about my work, I like to
have a chat with people. ButI've done quite a few
presentations. But this was kindof different. And there's a lot
to talk about here. But I'm notget into a lot of it sort of
(20:20):
about the sort of investment ofthe Recordist in the field and
what that means for white leftsound recording. But that was
the kind of first main challengewas learning how to, to read and
just kind of to do it naturallynot to kind of come in with sort
of an artificial kind offramework there. Because people
can kind of tell you know, ifyour attendees, you sort of have
(20:41):
pre rehearsed stuff, so I justwant it all to be natural, I
just literally just planned thetrips overnight with the
detector, just some kind of justto see what I could find pretty
much. You know, a lot of theother challenges were things
like anthropogenic noise. So Iwent to fantastic spot in
(21:02):
Arlington, it's just around thatsort of portion of the
sovereign, where it kind ofcurves around, just kind of
opposite, just beside wheels andthe sort of southwest of
England. And, you know, therewas a lot of farming activity
happening around the field. So Ikind of had to go back a second
time to get something usefulthere. And that, I mean, I would
(21:23):
say those were the kind of thetwo main challenges also just
just remembering, you know, Italked about the frequencies and
stuff and just knowing what,where to be at with the
heterodyne detector, but justremembering that when you're
trying to narrow it, you know,it's also a challenge. I mean,
people don't really realise howdifficult it can be to talk
about what you're doing asyou're doing it. So that was
(21:44):
interesting. And you know, justyou think that you would say oh,
yeah, you know, I'm kind of at26 kilohertz at the moment and
stuff and did you then try andremember if you actually said
that if you did like that Did Idid I say something completely
wrong there just little thingslike that. But in the end it
just kind of abandoned all thoseworries and went with it. I just
(22:06):
thought there was somethingup to 111 No, that's 81 that was
at a greater was that a greaterhorseshoe but I honestly I think
that was that was a greaterhorseshoe bought. Right. Elif is
(22:31):
very macro. That's literally agreater horseshoe, but I have
never recorded a greaterhorseshoe bot. Ever. Just
kidding. I can't believe that.
So I was tuning around 40 Yeah,that makes absolute sense. It
was a bit 40. Yeah. At 1am oddone, no. There are literally
(22:57):
greater horseshoe bots. I can'tbelieve that here. I was not
aware of there must be a wristnearby somewhere. But
that's pipistrelle to do onceyou. I don't want you anymore.
pipistrelle. I can't believethat. So I was tuning around 40
(23:17):
kilohertz, that's gonna be thefundamental of that species. So
the horseshoe bots, thestrongest frequencies like the
second harmonic, which isessentially twice the the
fundamental frequency. I can'treally explain that No, but it's
not the strongest frequency butit for a greater horseshit would
be run 40 kilohertz, and that'sjust where I caught it. What's
(23:42):
that? No. Is that maybe thereturn of the ceratonia? It's
all kicking off now. And, youknow, to be honest, the the main
goal Steve is to is just to kindof get people Well, the main
question I asked myself was,What if you can't get out to
(24:02):
detect? You know, it's okay,talking about being a weightless
sound recordist and, you know,we talk about these adventures
in Bath detecting, and even youknow, as researchers, and if
you're doing ecological work,you know, getting out quote,
unquote, in the field, and, andgetting out there and, you know,
putting on a pair of hikingboots, and off you go, but what,
what, there's a question ofaccess there. And this has kind
(24:23):
of become quite a hot topic inconservation recently, as well,
along with diversity and so on.
And I just, I asked myself, ifpeople can physically get out
into the field, then how do theyenjoy by detecting and and how
can Can I convey that experienceto them? And so that was kind of
a main question underpinning theproject along with, you know,
(24:44):
what, you know, it'd be nice tojust do a narrative project as
well and explore the narrativeaspect of it, but that was kind
of an underpinning thing. And sothat was something I kind of
went forward with, through thewhole thing.
Steve Roe (24:58):
Yeah, I mean, it's really Nice idea. And I have to
say when I, when you sent overthe, the example track of all
this is really, really wellproduced. Speaking of
anthropogenic noise asaeroplanes is the one thing that
gets me on Batchat all the timeand happens, just pause for a
minute, we'll have somethinggoes over. So, you've mentioned
you're missing a few species,understandably, you've said
(25:20):
there's eight walks on the albumplus the studio interlink
roughly how long then is eachwalk. So
Mark Ferguson (25:30):
that's kind of a difficult one, I've got some
walks, probably, I would say,around the 10 minute mark, and
other ones might be stretchingtowards 20 minutes, I'd say
maybe an average between sort of10 and 15 minutes to kind of
condense the material down intoa sort of digestible format. But
again, it was just kind offiguring out what, what the best
(25:53):
sort of length is for people tokind of, to have. And, you know,
the other issue that we'refacing, at the moment more
broadly, in the arts, and itsort of across the spectrum, I
suppose with with podcast isattention span, because that has
just dropped off off the chart,unfortunately. And you know, a
lot of people particularly andyounger folks, they just want
(26:15):
something that's immediatelydigestible, that's immediately
accessible. And if it's notinteresting, it's, there's often
not a lot of time given to letit sort of develop. So I just I
kind of wanted to go ingenerally speaking, the shorter
route, like making things alittle bit more condensed, a
little bit more accessible. Youknow, I have three, the project
(26:38):
that kind of have my three and ahalf year old daughter in mind
as well. So I kind of askedmyself, well, what would she
say, What would she put herselfthrough? But what would she kind
of enjoy? What would she enjoylistening to? If they kind of
brought it home to you and said,you know, you know, hey, like,
Would you like to check this,this sort of these bad signs
out? So I've tried to keep itfairly snappy, and you know,
(27:00):
good, fun, and just something asaccessible as possible. Really?
Steve Roe (27:05):
Yeah, absolutely. And apart from regional, those
people who also happen, thiswill encourage people to
actually get out there withtheir detectors as well, if
they're able.
Mark Ferguson (27:13):
Absolutely. And I think this is a broader thing as
well. You know, we talk a lotabout inspiring the younger
generation of naturalists inthis country and, and farther
afield. And there are a lot ofmisconceptions about about
younger folks, I think, and I'mjust again, speaking as a father
myself, you know, I kind of grewup with, sort of, as I mentioned
(27:38):
to you, before we had thispodcast, it's sort of this kind
of weird situation of about 1/3,playing video games, 1/3 being
ICT in the natural world, and1/3 reading books. And, you
know, that's kind of aninteresting balance to have. And
I think it's quite a healthybalance. And to be honest with
you. A lot of there's a lot ofmisconception about screen time
(28:01):
as well. So in terms ofinspiring people to get out
there, because a lot of that'sactually useful. And it's I
think it's a bit unfair to saythat, you know, if kids or
younger folks especially want toget interested in natural
history, and wildlife signrecording, in ecology, whatever.
There's a lot of ecology andwildlife and natural
(28:21):
surroundings in, for example,video games. At the moment, this
is something I'm looking atcreatively as well as a sound
artist and one of my areas offocus that was looking at how
video games can be used toalmost kind of construct natural
environments in a concertsituation. mean a lot of games
that I've played in the past,have superbly rendered non
(28:42):
natural environments. And, and,frankly, this is perhaps more
unfortunate, unfortunate,they're, they're free if
anthropogenic disturbance, youknow, tractors and so on, unless
they're supposed to be a part ofthe game. So they're almost
sadly more pristine. And in somecases more enjoyable than the
natural environments that wehave. No, because a lot of them
(29:04):
are frankly, completely pollutedby by anthropogenic noise.
Having said that, and maybegoing off in a little bit of a
tangent here. But having saidthat, there's a lot to be gained
from recording in suburban andurban environment and this is
something that bought the techthing lends itself to and a lot
of people forget this that inthe wildlife sound recording
(29:24):
community especially there's alot of focus on getting pristine
recordings and sort of effacingthe Recordist and having a very
objective experience portrayedto folks so with bad detecting a
lot of the disturbance becauseyou're dealing with with
ultrasound is just not even thatmuch of an issue. Of course you
have other problems likeinterference and so on if you're
(29:46):
tuning with the heterodynedetector, but a lot of that kind
of goes away. And so most of alot of my recordings and not
just a bunch of other speciesthat interesting ones recently
have been made in in built upenvironments and And that's
something that I find reallyinteresting about the project,
I've been able to do theseexplorations, particularly
(30:07):
around my homeland back inNorthern Ireland and
castledawson in areas that youknow, they're quite busy. But
there's still a lot of story.
There's a lot of humanity. AndI've even on a couple of
occasions in the project, I'veactually encountered some people
in the field, and we've talkedabout the project. And that kind
of was very naturally, verynaturally fit into the, into the
framework as well. So anotherbonus about the typing is, it
(30:31):
looks a bit weird when you'reout at night, or in the evenings
with this kind of thing in yourhand, which most people think is
a phone initially. And then, youknow, people ask you questions
about it, and you get to talk tothem about, you know, how cool
bats are really. And so theprojects open up a lot of stuff
like that,
Steve Roe (30:50):
as well. Brilliant.
And we've heard snippets asyou've been talking on the
episodes, Mark, it soundsabsolutely fantastic. Finally,
where can people find it?
Mark Ferguson (31:01):
So it's going to be on Bandcamp. If you just
Google walking with bots, andBandcamp, they'll probably throw
it back. If you can't get itthrough Bandcamp. You can go
straight to my website, which isMark Ferguson audio, all one
word, Mark Ferguson, audio.com,or just Google Mark Ferguson
audio, you've probably, youknow, it should hopefully be
(31:22):
available sort of be have beenpromoted and kind of talked
about elsewhere. But those arethe two main channels. So
Bandcamp or you can go straightto my website, Mark Ferguson
audio to get a hold of it.
Steve Roe (31:33):
And we'll put a link to both of those in the show
notes. Mark, it's been fantastictalking to you. Thank you very
much.
Mark Ferguson (31:38):
Greatly appreciate it. Steve, thank you.
Steve Roe (31:40):
A huge thanks to Mark for taking the time to do the
interview you've just heard andfor allowing us to use his clips
from his new album walking withthat. You can find marks album
in the show notes along withlinks to his website and a blog.
He's recently written on the BCTwebsite. I hope you've enjoyed
this instalment of series fiveplease tell the world about Bat
Chat on your social mediachannels. And we'll be back in
(32:01):
two weeks time. See you then.
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