Listen to the Roman Baths: Water, Prayer

Описание: A Sound Map of The Roman Baths is a creative project by Archaeology of the Ear inspired by the Roman Baths’ extraordinary history and geothermal hot springs. Composer and musician Chris Cundy and poet Adam Horovitz have got together with filmmaker Dominyka Vinčaitė to create a series of short experimental films, poems, and soundscapes to explore the historic site in a new way.

Our Sound Map leads us further into the hallowed spaces of the Roman Baths and we find ourselves in a quiet corner around a drinking fountain. We contemplate the water’s eternal cycle, the geothermal flow and change drawn from fault lines below.

Chris Cundy explains:
"Adam’s poem combines the overwhelming thought of this subterranean earth journey through deep blue marl and Jurassic rock with the quiet act of a human ritual. A simple cup of water is lifted from an unfathomable
place. It’s a moment where we can stop and contemplate our own journey around the baths, but as we do so we feel the gravity of these ancient walls spinning all around us.

"The sounds and music in the short film originate from hydrophone recordings that were made under the surface of the spring and from a number of other locations that were recorded around the site early in 2023. The natural subterranean sounds of the Roman Baths have been compressed and over layered in different ways. Sometimes they are forged into simple electronic processes which start to form discrete rhythms all of their own.

"Dominyka has filmed the hypnotic gas bubbles as they dance to the surface of the Kings Bath. They were captured using a set of submersible cameras. We also see diffused reflections of light as they reach the darkest surfaces below the ancient waterfall."

Water, Prayer
by Adam Horovitz
Water, pure in its cradle-glass,
is trembling sea in miniature, where lips
beach the meniscus and then gently pass
it back; a constant recycling of sips.
Each mouthful is a moving on, a cloud
as deeply housed as dreams of rain.
In sacred pool, in tap, in cup it’s flowed
from it to us, and there, and back again.
It’s in the engine of this world, the flow;
water, the roaring constancy of change.
It plumps the hidden seed and makes it grow
and can, with time, bring down a mountain range.
It is itself a prayer. Hold out your hand.
Watch water rub fear down to grains of sand.

© 2024 all rights reserved

A Sound Map of the Roman Baths is an Archaeology of the Ear production in partnership with The Roman Baths,
University of Gloucestershire, and Sound Image Research Centre
Supported by Arts Council England, Help Musicians, and Bath and North