At home, he’s a tourist…

I spend a couple of months of the year in London. Not being here all the time is an incentive to get out and experience the things which you always thought there’d be time to get around to when you were here all the time…

So it’s off to Greenwich, via the usual Tube and, for the first time, the Docklands Light Railway – eerily driverless, like the Toulouse metro, where you can sit up front and watch the rails snaking off to a vanishing point. Or be reminded – around Canary Wharf – of clanking up unlikely gradients and moving slowly, Hounds of Tindalos style, through outrageous angles – just like you did on the duck cars at Great Yarmouth’s Botton Bros. Funfair all those years ago… Er, yes, I still think trains are fun, and they make a joyful sound which I can’t resist recording. And recycling: here’s …the burning Thames I have to cross… which deals with various aspects of the Underground.

I made for the Royal Observatory, where I:

marvelled at Harrison’s various timekeepers, and at his persistence in dealing with the authorities who were so slow to reward him.

straddled two hemispheres at the Prime Meridian like a dumpy low-budget colossus…

enjoyed the view – even of the Oh-Two dome thingy which at that distance just looks like a beastie from the Burgess Shale.

Then a walk to Goldsmiths’ College via the original Greenwich Village for The Large Scale Immersive Audio Experiment. John Drever (Head of the Unit for Sound Practice Research) says: ‘The project aims to raise awareness of the emerging field of 3D audio and of how modern loudspeaker technologies can deliver a precisely controlled field of coverage required to effectively portray a 3D audio soundscape.
The works will be spacialized using Illustrious’ 3D Audioscape Software platform and presented via Duran Audio’s Intellivox DSP controlled Beam Steering Loudspeakers in the open air at four corners of the College Green.’

It’s running until November 7th.

Anyone doing large scale stuff with Ambisonics?