"The Wetland Project is a beautiful, quietly amazing work of micro-post-geographical art that allows us to be wherever we are and somewhere wonderfully natural and real, simultaneously. It’s an experience I wish everyone could have, and I wish there were more experiences like it." – William GibsonThe
Wetland Project book is the print component of a multidisciplinary and multimedia project centred on the sounds emanating from the ?E?TE?SEN marsh, in unceded W_SÁNEC territory (Saturna Island, British Columbia). The book is edited by artists Brady Marks and Mark Timmings, who have been inspired by the sonic phenomenaproduced by this small patch of Earth to create a 24-hour Slow Radio Broadcast,based on field recordings from the marsh, that radio stations across NorthAmerica and Europe have aired on Earth Day since 2017; a musical arrangementtitled
Wetland Senario, co-composed with Stephen Morris and performed byvocal ensemble musica intima; and a new media installation that algorithmicallytransforms sound frequencies from the marsh recordings into pure colour fieldsin flux.
Contributors to the book include novelist
William Gibson, MP and former Green Party leader
Elizabeth May, poet and spoken-word performer
Susan McMaster, musicologist
Stephen Morris, writer
Alex Muir, poet and W_SÁNEC First Nation member
Philip Kevin Paul, Stó:lo artist, curator, and scholar
Dylan Robinson, sound artist and World Soundscape Project member
Hildegaard Westerkamp, and curator, writer, and PhD student
Laurie White. The algorithmic flow of colour fields throughout the publication combined with photos of the project and an audio interface accessed using smartphones and tablet devices will give the book a colourful, music box-like quality.
Awarded first prize in the pictorial category at the 2022 Alcuin Awards for Excellence in Book Design.