In Conversation with Aous Hamoud
Sound artist Aous Hamoud speaks with new media artist Núria Rovira about the inspiration, process, and values behind The Four Rivers Residency.
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“My core values that I surround myself with whenever I’m working is language, connection, and translation”
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Núria Rovira. Hi, I’m Núria Rovira and I have been working with Deco Publique for the past year doing marketing work. Today I’m here with Aous Hamoud to talk about the Four River Residency that Aous is doing with Deco Publique. Aous is a Fine Art student at Lancaster University in the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA) and he is our current intern artist in residence through an internship supported by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). We are going to talk about the Four Rivers project, which is a sound-based investigation that Aous has led in the landscapes of Morecambe Bay during his residency.
So, hi Aous! Would you like to introduce yourself and talk about who you are as an artist?
Aous Hamoud. I’m Aous Hamoud and I’m born and raised in Syria. I moved here in 2009 and I studied architecture and then I had two years of not finding a job, and that is when I decided to study Fine Art and move to Lancaster University. That’s where I started my journey to find myself as an artist in Lancaster and Morecambe. I started working with drawing and painting the first year. Then, second year and this current year, I have been working with site specific field work, sound, and documentation with the places around me. Trying to find connections between things and trying to find new mediums to translate these connections.
NR. Could you describe what you have been doing for the Four Rivers residency?
AH. When I started the residency, me, Elena, and Lauren were talking about how to represent Morecambe Bay and look at landscapes. How to bring it up as part of the place that surrounds it, so giving it new culture, having more in-depth meaning of the location and the landscapes in Morecambe Bay. I had the full freedom to do whatever I wanted, which was amazing. Of course, the best thing to start with was the tide around Morecambe Bay. Slowly, that’s how I started connecting the tide, water, and landscapes.
But technically, my core values that I surround myself with whenever I’m working are language, connection, and translation. How can I intertwine and weave these three words? And it’s all not just as a word itself but how can I elaborate and explain the meaning of language. So, it’s always about trying to find new methods, new ways to connect between things. I always feel translation and language are something that I can rely on. It gets very personal with me because I’m from a different country and, literally, learning a new language is a feeling that you try to explain as a first impression of a place. The first time you learn a new word in a different language and the first time you look at a place, it feels very similar. So, I’m trying to get the same experience, the same feeling through site visits around Morecambe Bay landscapes. That’s how I started, that’s how the skeleton of the work began.
NR. Before we go into more project specific questions, we could go through a quick round of “Meet The Artist” questions. Obviously, I know you from having worked together creatively before, but for audiences who don’t know who you are as an artist I prepared a few questions to get to know you better.
I like to think that the best representation of the inside of the brain of an artist is their studio. So, I thought it would be interesting to ask you what is your favourite object in your studio?
AH. Defining object as something tangible?
NR. It doesn’t have to be, no. Especially as someone who works digitally!
AH. It’s my hard drive! Because it has all my brain in it. I was looking at it today: if I lose this hard drive, I’ve got nothing in my life. And it was funny, because I had my hard drive next to me and then I looked at some drawings I did at the Morecambe Bay sites. I was comparing between those two things, how all my life is related to all that data and numbers in the hard drive, but at the same time, the only thing that is going to last more than this hard drive is these rocks, drawings, and materials I collected. It’s a hard question to answer, but I would say my hard drive.
NR. What’s the weirdest object in your studio?
AH. I’ve got Baklava at the moment! I don’t know how deep you want me to go into this.
NR. Is there something deep about the Baklava?
AH. Yeah, there is family, homesickness probably, nostalgia… A weird feeling.
NR. Continuing with you favourites: who is your favourite artist right now? It doesn’t have to be your favourite artist of all time, but someone who is very present in your mind currently.
AH. Kiriaki Goni. She is a Greek artist that I got introduced to this year. She doesn’t want to say that she is a research artist, so she says that she is a visual artist, but she has more of a network in her work going to drawing, interviews, documentation, involving AI and machine learning. I think she has a very wide yet collected vision.
NR. Is there anything you are reading right now that is inspiring you?
AH. I’m reading bits and paragraphs, always from one place to another, so I have no full book that I’m reading. But the latest thing I have been reading for research is Louise K Wilson. It’s about ‘Cold Art’ and bunkers, it’s an essay. She did a BBC radio documentary about going around bunkers that got deserted at the beginning of the cold war. She was looking into artists that record sounds of work in these bunkers. It talks about sounds and relying on sound to express an emotion or a situation.
NR. The last quick question: is there anything you are listening to that is inspiring at the moment?
AH. Let me open my Spotify!
Mainly, I got introduced to some sound artists like Annea Lockwood and Chris Watson. They are all very experimental, very simple sound, act, and recording. They just go to a place, record sounds of the place and add it as a music album or sound installation.
NR. Are they all interested in site?
AH. Yes. So, you could sit and listen for one hour to other people’s places or recordings of nature, in a café, or something. It puts you in a really nice mood.
NR. That’s it for the quick questions about you as an artist, no we are going to go into more specific questions about The Four Rivers Residency. Before we go into the more abstract side of it, it would be nice to situate ourselves by imagining what you do out there when you do research on site. Could you describe what a day of field work looks like for you?
AH. I’ve got two cameras and a very old camera. The technical part of it is having a lot of different kinds of lenses. I’ve been collecting them over the years. I borrowed a parabolic microphone to collect far way sound like birds, or trees... It captures very specific sounds that are unreachable. And I’ve got a Zoom sound recorder and two stands, one for the Zoom and one for the camera.
This is all preparation. You know, charge everything, empty the memory sticks… Feels like you are preparing yourself for an actual discovery journey.
NR. Like a performance, in a way?
AH. Yes. I put my wellies on. I don’t want to get too philosophical, but all these things become the medium. The whole experience, it feels like I’m actually doing something, even if it’s meaningless in some way. It’s like I’m cleaning the brushes, preparing the colours, everything that I was doing is exactly as if someone is painting. It has the same feelings, the same emotions.
So, when I get there… I’ll talk about Sunderland Point, because it was the first location. I went there with Chloe. The personality of the place is that it gets locked, it gets zero access at one point during the day because of the high tide. But that only happens when the tide gets 9 meters above, and when I went there it was only 3 to 4 meters. I thought we were going to get locked, so I brought sleeping bags and food with me, like a full journey camp situation. But it didn’t.
I got there, and I was so nervous the first time. I was very anxious. There were so many sounds I didn’t expect to collect, kids crying, dogs barking, there was construction going on and someone was playing the radio while working… And then a boat just passes by. Something was happening that day! There were parachute jumps happening around the area, like a plane kept going and dropping people down. For one second, I got angry. I thought “this is not what I wanted!”. But slowly I found out, ok this is the location, and the whole deal with myself was to go there and whatever happens is going to be part of the tide. That’s sound related experience.
Visually, I kept looking into details, asking, what can I capture? The whole place became like a theatre scene, and you just sit down and look at all the details that absorbs your vision and attract your hearing.
“The whole place became like a theatre scene”
AH. Sunderland Point is the estuary point where the River Lune ends. The point where the sweet water connects with the salty water. Although I tasted it! It was salty.
NR. That would be a question I would ask myself! At which point does it stop being river water and it becomes sea water?
AH. I think sea water takes over. Or it could be just mud tasting salty?
NR. It kind of sounds like you are foraging for all these sound details and trying to take them with you. Sunderland was for the Lune River, and the others where the rivers Keer, Kent and Leven?
AH. Yes. Keer is a very small river, but it has more exotic elements than any other river I went to. It’s a tiny river with a massive personality.
NR. That’s so exciting! Do you think of the rivers as entities? You are talking about them as if they are people in a way.
AH. Yeah… I don’t want to say people because I am trying to work with the “non-human”. But I would say they are living… I want to say more like an organic machine than a human. Like they have their own data, their own algorithm. They have their personal connection with every person.
NR. There sure is an aliveness about them! So, you did one trip for each river. Why those four rivers?
AH. The answer is, because, when I first started even before choosing the rivers, I decided with Elena that I was going to not rely on the internet or any outside information for my research. I wanted this to be a very pure discovery of the landscapes of Morecambe Bay. Just me going there and learning what I can by being there; why does the landscape give to me? So that’s why we call it organic research, and why I’m calling the rivers organic machines.
NR. I love this wording: “organic research”.
AH. Yeah, it makes you feel calm when you do research that is organic. As in you are going there and you are touching things and ask, why is this mud thicker? Why is this foam darker? So, you ask yourself these questions and there is no answer, but you know now that this one is darker and this one is lighter, this is what organic research is.
NR. I suppose it’s about allowing yourself to be surprised by things. There is like a lack of control in the way you are researching, you are allowing for the landscape to take some of the agency of what happens, and you just sort of relinquish the control of where the research is going to go.
“So, you go to the tides and it’s always different, it’s always new. You have the opportunity of every single time to capture a new impression of the place, a first impression. In the same place, endlessly”
NR. You are talking about being sort of “in conversation” with the landscape, discovering and seeing how the place responds to you. What is it about the landscape of Morecambe Bay that first captured your attention? Because clearly there is a kind of fascination for the site, with the tides and the Bay. Was there a moment when you realised you were drawn towards that?
AH. The sea always draws my attention. I’m working with translation, language and being introduced to something for the first time. The first impression of things and how can we make a first impression every single time.
And the water, the tide comes up and cleans away a 20-mile scale of human connection, makes everything non-human. And then it creates a new land, a new place. So, you go to the tides and it’s always different, it’s always new. You have the opportunity of every single time to capture a new impression of the place, a first impression. In the same place, endlessly.
NR. That is so beautiful. I love that.
AH. I’m getting emotional!
NR. It’s amazing the fascination you have for the tides. It’s something so exciting and I wanted to ask you, is Morecambe Bay the first time you experienced tides like this? Because you are not from Morecambe, you are someone who moved there 3 years ago. I suppose I am asking from the point of view of someone who moved to the Morecambe area 4 years ago and it was my first time properly experiencing what a tide was. I was wondering if that was the case for you?
AH. Yeah! I’ve never experienced tides, I’ve never seen a tide before. Syria is on the Mediterranean and it’s a very contrasted environment, very straightforward. It’s not as smooth and emotional as the location of Morecambe Bay. It’s faster, stronger, and here it is more loose and slower. I’m just imagining in my head how the waves are touching, how it touches the land.
I just remembered! The first time I came to Lancaster I spent 10 days by myself before the university started, which was amazing. I went several times to Morecambe, and it was always storming and raining and… I don’t know, it was probably my first friend here. Somehow, my first connection with the place. I would go visit that location and it was so good to be there! It was empty, you know? It’s like a break from things in front of you.
NR. It’s the vastness if the space, you never see this much empty space. That’s so beautiful how you say it was your first friend! I suppose there is something significant about this being your first contact with this new place you had just arrived at, and it’s so interesting that now you are researching it in this very intimate and personal way.
I wanted to ask, obviously there is the idea of the tides, which is very interesting to you, the idea of the water coming in and out, it’s like space being taken away and given back to you accessing it. But the rivers are something I had never personally considered as part of that movement. What is it that made you focus your attention on the rivers? This idea of that water flowing in, this point of contact. Is there a story behind that?
AH. I was looking at archive maps at the university library, really old large maps of Morecambe Bay. And my eyes got drawn to these locations because I was trying to understand where Morecambe Bay is, what are the borders, from which place to which place. And because I am not relying on the internet, I looked at Lune as the beginning and Barrow in Furness as the end. That’s how I started my journey to looking into the rivers. But mainly, conceptually, the rivers have the purest connection point between land and water, and how they mix together. So I thought, I can go to any of the locations of the shore of Morecambe Bay, but this location where the land and the water interact, there is more elements that can happen. I was looking for this place that has more history, more stuff that happened in it, more movement.
NR. That makes sense, it sounds almost like the rivers were providing a guide, like a narrative to guide you within the vastness of the landscape and Morecambe Bay. The fact that there are 4 of them in this space, it makes you think of a story as you are going to each one of them. It really provides a structure, which I think is so essential, because looking at the tides and something so big it’s easy to get lost. I think this is what makes the project so interesting, there is this story to be told with these different characters.
AH. That’s how we came up with the name. When we started the project, we called it “Sense Invitation” because I started with the approach of sound because of what I did in my previous project. So, it started with “How can I understand the landscape of Morecambe Bay with sound?” And my regular studio practice was translation and connection, so how can I collide these two things together? That’s how it started being called “Sense Invitation”. It was still the same idea, about going to places in Morecambe Bay landscapes. But when I found the rivers, I said “Ok, I’m going to do the sound with the rivers because so much is happening, I need to be there”. And then talking I heard Elena say, “The Four Rivers”. I thought, this is so emotional, it’s so much more interesting!
NR. It sounds like a myth, doesn’t it? Or a fable, just hearing that it sounds like there is a story to hear, which is what you want people to feel when they hear about your art project.
AH. And it’s not straight forward. The sound of each river is the Four Rivers. It’s very poetic.
“I think that’s the answer: sound is freedom”
NR. So, you mentioned earlier how you are someone who has worked across different materials and mediums. You’ve worked with video and painting in the past, and now you have started working with sound and that is the main medium you are using for this project. I wanted to ask you, what is it about the medium of sound that made you chose it as the way to approach this research?
AH. The first thing that popped into my head is how I got introduced to sound, how I found out I can do so many things through sound. It was when I did my university residency during lockdown in an old brewery, and I started collecting sound in that location. That’s how it all started. It was very abstract because I was collecting the sound of the wall and the sound of the wind. I felt freedom through using sound as a medium at this point. It stayed with me because it’s very flexible, easy to hold, a very portable element. That’s how I got interested in sound, that’s where I thought about digging in the experimentation of sound and where can I go with it, how can it be part of my work in progress with my studio practice and my general journey as an artist. I think that’s the answer: sound is freedom.
NR. That’s fantastic.
It’s like there is a process of collecting the sound in the location and then bringing it with you to the studio. Could you talk about how you interact with those materials once you arrive at the studio away from the site?
AH. I made a small change about that. My first thought was that I would collect these sounds, bring it to the studio and manipulate it, stretch it, echo it… play with it editing the sounds as much as I can and abstract it the same way I was going to abstract the visuals.
But when I went back to organise my work, I found there are beautiful sounds when you separate it from its element, its full context, like two seconds of a bird making this random voice. If you take it away and put it in a video and decontextualize it without editing it, just keeping it as it is, it makes a new impression, it adds a new element to the place. And I felt like this is exactly what I’m working with and connecting different environments. This is the actual translation, it’s happening where I’m taking the voice, not editing it, I’m taking out extra voices, cleaning it and adding the voice to the rest of the sound that I’ve collected.
NR. Does it go back to this idea of the “first impression” when you are cleaning up and presenting this sound?
AH. Yes. But I’m not thinking about these things all the time when I’m working. It becomes part of it. See, this is why I say it’s like a painting, you know? You are not thinking about this stuff all the time when you are painting, like colour or just composition, light and dark… You are just doing it. But I think all these things, because they are personal things, I feel like it all works out at one point. Like when I decontextualized the sound, I thought “Oh my god this is exactly what I’m working on!”
NR. Right, there is like a realisation.
AH. Yes!
NR. There is this sort of intuitive reasoning that guides you, but it can’t be conscious, because otherwise there is something that is not artistic about it. And then when you tell people that there is this realisation, it’s you noticing all this underlying beliefs or belief system that your practice follows. Which, comparing the similarities in the way you paint and the way you record sound, it feels like these underlying intuitive structures are similar across the different mediums.
You were talking about how you take the sound outside and there is a process of editing that takes place in the studio. Those materials and sounds, you are shaping them towards some sort of outcome, some form of final artwork. Could you tell us a bit about that?
AH. These sounds are going into four episodes. Each episode is going to be about 2 to 4 minutes. I don’t want to make it longer or shorter. I think you need 1 minute to warm up, 1 minute to give concentration and 1 minute to give up these days. So, I feel that 2 to 3 minutes is a good amount of time. I’m just thinking about people who are busy in their lives, but at the same time they want to listen to something.
So yes four rivers, four episodes. I took some visuals, but I want to concentrate more on the sound as the main visual. More than what you actually see on the screen, I want attention to be on what you are hearing. That’s why the visuals are going to be very simple, very minimal to help you understand these sounds. To give a platform for the sound to be heard, taking it as an element from a place and make it accessible to everyone online. So, you just need to be in this situation, this aura where you say “I’m just going to sit down and give this a few minutes of my day to listen to this place”.
NR. There is something so exciting and rare about that. Sound is always not the main character. It’s like something that complements everything else. There is something really exciting about making this active effort to ensure sound will be the centre of the attention. It’s easy to feel distracted nowadays – our attention is addicted to moving image, so forcing us to listen to sound as the focus can be a great experience, I’m really excited to hear it!
AH. I want to say that this is not the finale. The 4 episodes are a beginning for the connection between language, translation. These are an experiment, a beginning for understanding the language and translation of the landscapes of Morecambe Bay. So, they are not the final work, for the residency or for me still looking into the landscape, it’s not the final outcome.
NR. Right, it’s just a part of the story. There is an “ongoingness” to it, it flows beyond this project.
“Translation is not a word, the meaning of it I can’t explain it in words. The only way I can explain it is through exploring and observing and introducing myself to places and new locations, new experiences”
NR. I would really love to go back to the word translation and translating. This is a word I personally keep bumping into as a bilingual artist myself. Realising that, with other bilingual artists I have worked with, the word translation keeps coming back, as something very central to the way they see the world. I just wanted to ask, what does the word translation mean to you? When you use it in your work, what actions does it imply, what questions is it trying to answer?
AH. Oh my gosh, I’m a bilingual; my first language is Arabic, I come from Syria.
Translation is not a word, the meaning of it I can’t explain it in words. The only way I can explain it is through exploring and observing and introducing myself to places and new locations, new experiences. In a non-complicated way, that’s what translation is for me.
Translation is as well when you take from a place and put it in another place.
NR. Which is what all artists do ever, right?
AH. We all translate! Everyone translates.
How do I put it in the river? It’s about finding the moment that connects those different elements in the environment and presenting it in a new from.
NR. So that’s when you are out there recording sounds?
AH. Yes. It’s interesting to think about is that way because now I’m thinking how translation acts as a medium in my work.
NR. I feel like I’ve perceived it as a very relevant element in the way you describe what you do.
I’m very interested in what you do on site, this field work. You said you were spending 7 hours outside doing work? Could you tell us about interesting things you found, any stories…? I just wanted to know more about the actual experience of being out there and anything interesting that happened.
AH. There are so many things; in each river I did something new, and I changed my approach to recording as well. Like, Sunderland Point I was very formal and trying to be as professional as I can. Very “1,2,3,” everything was planned and if it doesn’t work according to the plan I was like “oh no, it’s not working!”. So, I learned how to be more flexible and more relaxed, like the water!
NR. Absolutely! You were mimicking this thing you were interacting with. That makes sense.
“This is the thing that connects all the rivers: you always feel like you are not on earth”
AH. The sunset was amazing at Sunderland point. A special part of it is that it has so many different corners and places to stand and collect sound. And it has its own community, it feels like a different planet.
This is the thing that connects all the rivers: you always feel like you are not on earth.
NR. What is it about it that makes you feel that way?
AH. When the tide is at its lowest, everything opens, the rivers are naked. There are no more rivers, it’s empty. It feels like something you would not see when you are on planet Earth. More like Dune, New World, Start Wars. A different planet – I’ve never been to Mars, but that’s what Mars looks like.
NR. It’s about the emptiness, right? The lack of humans or nature, just open space. It’s so strange, right? You never see that.
AH. In River Keer there were so many dogs! So many different cute dogs. That has nothing to do with it but it’s just something I remembered.
NR. Did you collect sounds from the dogs?
AH. Yeah. With River Keer I started collecting sounds with my hydrophone because the water was very strong, you know, like smashing with the mud and it takes parts of the land. It looks like massive mountains are breaking but it’s just like a tiny cliff, like a tiny edge that falls down. So, I was trying to get this sound between those cracks and in the water. That was interesting and I found a very oddly shaped jellyfish, so it added to the elements of being in a different planet because it looks very alienated.
NR. I remember you showed me a picture of that, it looked like an alien for sure.
AH. Yeah, and that’s Keer. Everything was purple as well, the whole time, for some reason. That’s how I remember it.
Kent, it felt like you’re on more of a desert planet. Because it was all very straight, the land was very straight, and you could look far away and see water and see land and cloud until it fades out.
I found a new thing to do as well in Kent: I got the parabolic. It’s shaped like a dome, and it has a microphone inside, so it was very big and wide. And I started hearing sounds like bubbling of air trying to come out from the mud, finding access to go outside. And you start listening to these tiny bubbles, this tiny conversation that is happening between those cracks in the mud.
NR. A very detailed small part of it.
AH. Very small details. I got the whole parabolic and I just put it on the mud where those sounds are made, and I kept it for 15 minutes there. I managed to get really nice specific sounds. I was really happy about that. And I kept on doing it everywhere.
“With this sound it translates the meaning of being in a new location, because it felt like a massive cave in a different place, in a different universe”
AH. Leven. I was tired when I got to Leven.
NR. Was it the last one you did?
AH. It was the last one. But it was worth it. It was beautiful there. I went before, there is a train railway that cuts my pathway to the estuary, so I stayed behind the railway. But in Leven, there were some nice caves. Finding caves, there was a nice echo through the sound of the tides. So, I started taking the Zoom Recorder and I left it inside those locations for 10 minutes with my headphones in, just laying down on the rock and trying not to lose my recorder, and not to move as well to keep the sound clean. With this sound it translates the meaning of being in a new location, because it felt like a massive cave in a different place, in a different universe.
These are the actual things that I remember.
NR. I think there is something so important about hearing the specific stories of you being there. For understanding what the project looks like, what’s behind the project.
To wrap this up, I thought it would be nice to acknowledge the “ongingness” of this project and how it will go beyond this residency which is ending at the moment. I wanted to ask, if you had unlimited amounts of time and unlimited funds for this project, what would you do next?
AH. I’m starting to learn no not rely on money for my work. The only reason I would need money is it to get fuel and equipment. I would buy the best lenses! I need a lot of micro detail lenses, this 20cm long lens that you can see the hairs on a bee, or a fly and it captures every detail. It’s always nice to go into the detail.
Mostly it’s for access, transportation, and technicality. It would really help.
The time, it’s really endless working with the tide. I could stay there for longer than 7 hours, I could do this every single day and sounds could become a full 50 minutes and visuals could apply a different effect… Probably it wouldn’t be fully about sound then, it would be more of an artistic documentation. It would change everything. I would not say it would make it better, but it would have a different approach to it.
That’s the challenge I think, that’s the nice part of it: that you get to prove yourself without having all this stuff to design.
NR. I suppose there is something helpful about having edges and limits to not get lost in a way.
AH. I need deadlines as well. Other ways I cannot...
NR. Collect sound forever?
AH. Yes, exactly! Just keep collecting them, and then “where am I?” and then have a midlife crisis.
(…)
NR. This has been fantastic. Thank you for your time, Aous, and for showing us the behind the scenes and the unseen parts of this work. I’m very excited to see the outcomes of the project and the things we will publish along with it. Thank you so much, it’s been great!
AH. It’s been a pleasure working with everyone in Deco Publique. It’s a perfect time that you came in and helped with everything. Thank you very much to Elena, and Lauren and Núria. That’s it, thank you everyone!
