Bolton Street - Dark Voices
Simon Cuming >

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I decided to investigate the notion of the paranormal in a somewhat surrealist tradition. It was well known that spiritualism and notions of the uncanny often intrigued the Surrealists.

I made field recordings using a Sony Minidisc recorder in the Bolton Street Cemetery at approximately 11pm when the moon was approaching its recent perigee. Many “tenants” of the Bolton St Cemetery were reinterred when the cemetery was divided in half with the construction of the Wellington motorway. If anywhere was going to have unsettled spirits that may wish to be heard, I felt that this maybe the place. I later processed these recordings in an attempt to uncover phenomena known as Raudive voices named after Konstantin Raudive a Latvian parapsychologist.

What is presented for the show Auratica Fantastica includes the original unprocessed field recordings and a small number of processed excerpts that seem to demonstrate whispered phrases that include the terms “turnaround”,”righteous”, and “stay calm” amongst others.

I leave it up to the viewer to interpret these investigations.


Simon Cuming
2011