making art in caves

L

liv

New member
I've had an account here for about 5 minutes, so apologies if I get anything wrong.

I'm one of the many final year art school students who who are now sat around at home because of covid-19. For the past few months I've been drawing and painting and making up a weird horror story based on a visit to Upper Long Churn last September. Even though that project has been sort of stopped short because of the virus and my university closing, I'm not ready to stop thinking about underground landscapes, so TL;)R: what do you think is the best way to go about making art in caves, about caves/caving? Is it even a possible thing to do?

I'm very enthusiastic but also definitely an amateur in terms of technical knowledge, so I thought it would be best to ask here.

(Right now all I can think about is how cool it would be to transmit morse code translations of cave layouts/people's caving stories from underground to people listening above ground, sort of like a one-time radio show thing - but this is a first idea and needs a lot of work!)
 
S

Stuart France

Active member
Here's some ideas attached for you from prehistoric to modern era, and the odd jokey one.

Let's not forget Fred Flintstone stone age cave cartoons either, but you've got to have been a child in the 1960s to remember them for real.  But Google remembers it all.

There's some painted shower tiles at the Wessex caving club hut which link together to show a cave but I don't have a photo of it.  I'm sure someone else does though...

As to transmitting data and speech out of caves, through the rock, even across the world from cave to cave, you need to join the BCRA Cave Radio and Electronics Group (http://bcra.org.uk/creg/)
 

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ZombieCake

ZombieCake

Well-known member
Whereabouts in the UK are you based? That would help focus local knowledge. Cave art isn't a problem in the UK.  Like the Morse code aspect - that's what we all might be left with!
 
Speleotron

Speleotron

Member
I think you could do a lot with sound recording underground. Filming is a total nightmare but the soundscape is fascinating. Flowing water covers so many different things from a dripping tap sound to a roaring waterfall. If I'm sat on my own underground with the light off then I start hearing things in the stream, and other people do too. You also have big scarey sounds like falling rocks, and half sounds that you're not sure if you're imagining or not, like when you've been on your own for a while and you think you can hear people coming but it turns out to be nothing.
 
L

liv

New member
Hey all thank you for responding!!

Stuart France that cave radio and electronics link is fantastic, thank you so much! I will absolutely look into that.

I'm based in Doncaster, so Peak District and Yorkshire Dales are the most accessible to me. My immediate area is mostly mine tunnels, although I have no idea if I'd be able to get down there.

RE: sound - yeah, when I tried taking drawing supplies underground last time I figured it was a lost cause pretty quickly. I think sound is probably the way to go - my guide was fantastic and talked to me about the history of the area and her previous caving trips and interesting facts about geology that I'd never have known otherwise, so I think that's the kind of thing that I'd like to focus on. The context of the place the stories were told was very important though, which is why I was thinking about radio broadcasts to the capture the sound of the cave alongside the story?







 
Speleotron

Speleotron

Member
Sounds good. Setting some of the old caving stories to a recorded cave soundscape could be good. Cave guides usually have a few to tell and some of them might even be true! In the right pubs you could probably find a few people willing to tell stories in return for beer. While we're all grounded this might be your best bet. http://caving-library.org.uk/audio/audio.shtml
 
ZombieCake

ZombieCake

Well-known member
My favourite portable sound recorder is a Zoom H1 (newer model is ZoomH1n, has easier level control). Cheap too.
https://www.zoom-na.com/products/field-video-recording/field-recording/zoom-h1-handy-recorder
As with all sound recorders put a dead cat or foam pop filter on the microphones.
 
Pitlamp

Pitlamp

Well-known member
liv said:
I'm based in Doncaster, so Peak District and Yorkshire Dales are the most accessible to me. My immediate area is mostly mine tunnels, although I have no idea if I'd be able to get down there.
Click to expand...

If you're at Doncaster, that's on the South Yorkshire Coalfied. So any mine tunnels near you would be coal mines. Don't go in them; not even a short distance! There's a likelihood they contain very dangerous gases (either from the breathing or explosion points of view.)

As mrodoc has rightly pointed out above, there is a friendly group which caters exactly for your interests. They have meets at weekends (when there's no coronavirus about, obviously) on which you can visit caves safely in the company of experienced cavers who have a range of artistic talents. If you contact ISSA they can no doubt advise / make suggestions for how to go about doing things. But all us cavers are grounded at the moment, with  a voluntary moratorium on going underground (because we don't want any risk of being the cause of a rescue call out and / or a burden on the NHS right now).

Until we get back to normal, there's loads of images, video clips, films cave surveys etc available on the internet, which might help give you inspiration meanwhile.

Good luck.
 
alastairgott

alastairgott

Well-known member
Wasn't there some arty things on at hidden earth in 2019.

Soundscapes, reportage, sculptures, photos, paintings. it's a rich subject, a photo giving you an idea of some of the stuff people do is on here: https://hidden.earth/salons/art-salon.php

let me do some more digging around, my memory might come back to me.
 
L

liv

New member
Cheers all! This is so helpful.

Speleotron thank you for the link to the audio library and also mrodoc for the ISSA info. Those willl be a great starting point into more research and I'll look into ISSA asap.

@ Pitlamp Don't worry! I was raised on stories about why not to go anywhere near mines (some particularly bleak infomercials in school spring to mind) so I'm not about to try going down any. Sorry if I made it sound like I was about to run down the nearest pit. Thank you for your advice  :)

Hope everyone is doing okay in these weird times and staying well.
 
K

Kenilworth

New member
I dragged my guitar into a cave today and played for a couple of hours. A particular room with both a tremendous echo and a stream made my old junk guitar sound far better than it is... but I don't reckon you'd call it art.
 
Maj

Maj

Active member
Kenilworth said:
I dragged my guitar into a cave today and played for a couple of hours. A particular room with both a tremendous echo and a stream made my old junk guitar sound far better than it is... but I don't reckon you'd call it art.
Click to expand...

My personal opinion is that music played in a cave environment has more artistic value than a gaffer taped banana, an unmade bed or a pile of bricks. Even if it is played on an old junk guitar.

Getting back on topic:-
ISSA as mrodoc suggests.
ISSA do arrange caving trips where they do create artworks underground, taking drawing supplies etc underground is definitely not a lost cause.
Robin Gray who Jason C linked is one of the key figures within ISSA.

Not suggesting you take up diving, but it is surprising what is possible:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-48980636

Maj.
 
F

Fulk

Well-known member
Welcome back, Kenilworth.

I was once in a cave when, to my astonishment, a guy wandered past playing some sort of pipes, with a dog tagging along behind him ? the Pied piper of the Dales? ? anyway, whether it was the unexpected nature of the encounter, or the acoustics of the place, I don?t know ? but it sounded marvellous.
 
MarkS

MarkS

Moderator
Fulk said:
Welcome back, Kenilworth.

I was once in a cave when, to my astonishment, a guy wandered past playing some sort of pipes, with a dog tagging along behind him ? the Pied piper of the Dales? ? anyway, whether it was the unexpected nature of the encounter, or the acoustics of the place, I don?t know ? but it sounded marvellous.
Click to expand...

I remember doing a pull-through down Yordas a few years back. Abseiling down the last pitch I couldn't work out what on earth I could hear coming from below. There turned out to be about 20 people scattered around the main chamber smoking weed and all playing different instruments, with what sounded like their own individual choices of timing and key. It was punctuated from time to time by a chap blowing some sort of animal horn, which completely drowned out everything else. I wasn't a huge fan, but I suppose art is a very subjective thing.
 
Speleotron

Speleotron

Member
Mark I was about to post something very similar it must be a popular spot for that kind of thing! I abbed down the waterfall into the chamber and there was a hippie sat on a rock playing random chords on a guitar. She was surrounded by her cold and miserable sons who were clearly fed up. She said she wanted to play along with the natural harmonies of the place.
 
Mark Wright

Mark Wright

Active member
The Owter Zeds played a concert in Yordas in the 80s. Its got to be one of the best live reggae ska concerts I've ever been to.

There was certainly a lot of weed smoking going on during that one.

Here they are playing a concert in the Dordogne in 2009.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ9IEFMehYo
 
K

Kenilworth

New member
Fulk said:
Welcome back, Kenilworth.

I was once in a cave when, to my astonishment, a guy wandered past playing some sort of pipes, with a dog tagging along behind him ? the Pied piper of the Dales? ? anyway, whether it was the unexpected nature of the encounter, or the acoustics of the place, I don?t know ? but it sounded marvellous.
Click to expand...

I've got a pennywhistle in my survey bag for breaks on solo trips. I wouldn't put anyone else through that, but sometimes it helps keep me sane when I'm getting a lot of difficult distance between myself and the surface.
 
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