Commissioned by Re:Drift & Full of Noises for Dawn Chorus Day ‘Sound Camp’ at Eskdale Mill in Cumbria, a watermill dating to the 1500s.
At-Tend began with a performance of definitions and etymologies related to the attentive , inviting all present to explore at-tend-ing with care (below).
Listening tools and devices provided ways to attending at different scales. Oversized, pixellated digital prints from an archaeological photographic survey of the site provided material for exploring ways of attending differently to ourselves, eachother.
Together we repurposed and disrupted the representational surface of the print. Improvised installations, shelters, wearables, flags and votives emerged.
Non human actors such as wind, soil, water, plants and insects came into correspondence with technical devices, and human participants, and the paper surface carrying ink in the image of the ‘skin’ of the Mill,
By foregrounding collective, sensory participation as a mode of inquiry, the project contributed practice-led methods for engaging with complex ecological systems, understandings of environmental stewardship and site-responsive research.
Attendees travelled to and from the workshop on the Ravenglass and Eskdale narrow gauge railway.
The work has featured in a chapter in R.L Wilsons Doctoral thesis and in the 2025 Exhibition at Full of Noises, Ear to the Estuary.
At-tend:
the origin of the word is in the latin Tendered “to stretch”
Attend means to extend to stretch toward…to bend to, to notice.
ATTEND:
Be present:
pay attention to
give practical help and care to; look after.
TEND
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English tenden, from Middle French tendre, from Latin tendere “to stretch, extend, proceed”
: to exhibit an inclination or tendency :
tends to be optimistic
: to move, direct, or develop one’s course in a particular direction
cannot tell where society is tending
: to pay attention : apply oneself
tend to your own affairs
tend to our correspondence (my emphasis)
: to apply oneself to the care of : watch over
: to have or take charge of as a caretaker or overseer
archaic : LISTEN
obsolete : AWAIT
to cultivate, to foster, to mind
TENT :
Middle English: from Old French tente, based on Latin tent- ‘stretched’, from the verb tendere . The verb dates from the mid 16th century.
tent (n.)
c. 1300, “portable shelter of skins or coarse cloth stretched over poles,” from Old French tente “tent, hanging, tapestry” (12c.), from Medieval Latin tenta “a tent,” literally “something stretched out,” noun use of fem. singular of Latin tentus “stretched,” variant past participle of tendere “to stretch” (from PIE root *ten- “to stretch”). The notion is of “stretching” hides over a framework