Dr Maria Papadomanolaki has contributed a piece to ‘Place Language’ a international non-profit compilation album project inspired by the themes found in Robert Macfarlane’s widely-acclaimed book ‘Landmarks’. In particular it focuses on the book’s extensive topographic glossaries, the “word-hoard” of depictive landscape terms gathered from 30 different languages, dialects and sub-dialects around Britain & Ireland which are divided into sections by type of terrain (Flatlands, Uplands, Waterlands, Coastlands, Underlands, Northlands, Edgelands, Earthlands and Woodlands). Relying on these topograms, or “tiny place poems”, as creative prompts, Place Language seeks to inspire a renewed interest in our natural surroundings and reinvigorate our appreciation for the audible textures & patterns that characterize them in keeping with the book’s stated desire to “re-wild” our vocabulary.

The collection features the work of 28 different sound-artists, field recordists, and musicians from around the globe each of whom chose a topogram and recorded an impression of it thus lending new aspects of dimensionality through sound. These selections cover all nine Landmarks glossaries along with place-words of new coinage as prompted by the blank glossary which Macfarlane leaves at the end of the book for readers to fill in for themselves. The end result is a truly global, collaborative survey of place, language, and sound.

More info on the project can be found here.