A Record of Fear

Artist: Louise K Wilson
Location: Orford Ness, Suffolk

With access to one of the most remote and secret places in Britain, Louise K. Wilson created sound and video works for Orford Ness - the largest vegetated shingle spit in Europe and once a top secret military testing site. As the scene of the invention of radar, atomic bomb tests and Cold War surveillance, Wilson’s project, ‘A Record of Fear’, compounded the mystery and intrigue which characterises the Ness. For a video piece, Wilson invited a choir to perform madrigals in the remaining military buildings - songs of love and longing providing a poignant counterpoint to the stark and disturbing interiors. An audio work of manipulated sounds recorded on site could be heard in the viewing gallery of the Black Beacon Receiver via custom-made ear-pieces. In one of the derelict test laboratories, a recording of a centrifuge that was once used to test the stability of nuclear bombs was amplified using a sound rig the size of a small car – making a sinister throbbing noise of such power it could be heard for miles.