S.O.S: Jarman's Garden

Click To Play 'Jarman's Garden' by Sherre Delys

Piece: Jarman's Garden

By: Sherre Delys

Year: 2000

Length: 14 Mins 49 Secs

Sherre Delys' aim for this project was to show her journey of Derek Jarman's garden (a filmmaker who loved and laboured to create a unique garden of his own).

In this piece, there appears to many more layers than in Beirne's work. So much is going on at once that there must be around 7 soundscapes flowing through the piece. The dialogue and sound effects are once again juxtaposed - by having high pitched beeps and a deep bass at the same time. You can hear feet walking through gravel throughout as the dialogue plays, which suggests that the piece contains movement. One downside I think to the idea of so many soundscapes is that sometimes there is too much, so it's distracting from what the dialogue is presenting to the audience - is it meant to appear in a way disorientated? Maybe Sherre Delys aim was to present the place's rugged and uniqueness compared to normal beautiful green gardens. 

The idea of wind is presented through a variety of sound effects: the wind blowing itself and the wind chimes chiming. The wind fades out and the audience is presented with silence, which appears to be the method that Sherre has chosen to change the scene in piece, as afterwards the dialogue begins again or completely different sounds occur. This is clever because it allows the piece to flow as a journey, instead of quick cuts to different parts of the garden.

Sometimes the dialogue presented isn't clear, at first I thought this was a fault in the piece, however after listening over, you can tell that the dialogue wasn't the aim, the aim was the place itself, rather than him describing it - the place overpowers him and his words wash away with the water. 

The piece sets it's scenes very well. For example, when the dialogue talks about fishing, a sound file of the sea waves crashing against the shore is used - makes the audience feel like they're there in the moment, allowing them to listen and paint this space as their own. 

At the beginning of the piece, the sounds collide to create a calming and relaxing effect on the audience, the majority of sounds makes an impression, the variety of noises identifies it's uniqueness to any other garden. Towards the end, the sounds get louder, closer to the audience. The sound of the waves becomes more aggressive, and the deep bass slowly starts to overpower it - until the sound quietens to silence all together. It creates tension and excitement, which isn't usually something I feel from a garden!

I feel that the end kind of drifted a little. Maybe the aim was to present a calming, or the drifting of words - showing they mean nothing in the piece, however the beginning had dialogue and a range of tempos, the end had one deep tempo it followed for over 3 minutes...

I liked this piece, but some of it was hard to understand. For example the amount of soundscapes at the beginning was sometimes too distracting from what the piece was supposed to be saying, almost like too much was going on at once, however it calms at the end, allowing the audience to relax and portray the calm side of the garden space in their minds.