Hauntology, Horror, Hyperreality, and the Forest of the Mind

A Journey Through Sound, Myth, and Memory

I realise some of my subscribers may have already seen this, but all the non-subscriber readers, my stats tell me are here, have not. This was my final major project for the MA in Sound Design, at Bath Spa University, which I completed in 2023. The accompanying commentary, production notes, and conceptual thinking were initially only shared with my tutor, so I thought I’d reproduce them here.

This feels relevant and particularly poignant in light of the recent passing of David Lynch, who is referenced both in the video and in this text. It’s worth noting that Lynch, in addition to the film direction, (which I really, REALLY, do not profess to emulate), also handled much of the sound design for his creations—a detail that DID resonate with me throughout this project.

While this was primarily a sound design project rather than a video production one, the two disciplines are, of course, inextricably linked. To experience the piece as it was intended, I strongly recommend using headphones to fully immerse yourself in the 3D binaural surround sound effect.

Cheers, and I hope you enjoy it. (Oh, I got a distinction for it btw)

Introduction

This piece represents a significant development in my understanding of sound design principles within visual contexts. It explores the roles of sound in storytelling, dramaturgy, and communicating critical theories. As a dramaturge manipulates narratives to reflect ideas through cross-cultural signs and film-historical references, I aimed to echo this approach through sound, drawing on themes from my rural working-class background, philosophical influences, and personal sound practices, with the forest serving as a central motif.

While this project may not align precisely with traditional sound design criteria, it marks a crucial innovation in my professional growth. It allowed me to acquire new skills in video editing and spatial audio production, despite my primary focus being on indie, experimental, and sound design music rather than mainstream film or gaming.

Coming from a background in broadcast media, music, and cultural studies, with a recent self-taught history in digital sound production, I've been able to expand and apply these skills to my evolving sound design practice. The visual music module was pivotal, prompting me to delve into video production and editing—a domain I hadn't explored extensively despite prior experiences with analogue media.

Throughout this project, I enhanced my skills in editing visuals, sound sculpting, processing, synthesis, layering, spatial soundscaping, and automation. Working with new tools like Reaper and the Filmora edit suite, I also gained proficiency in integrating video editing with sound design—an invaluable asset for future hybrid projects.

Early Planning and Challenges Faced

Initially, I envisioned creating a multimedia piece inspired by the oral histories and geo-history of Cookworthy Moor in West Devon, where I grew up, blending community-based storytelling with audio-visual elements akin to a visitor's centre experience. However, logistical challenges and the unavailability of key contributors shifted my focus.

An alternative opportunity arose with Forestry England for a forest sound bath project, potentially for in-situ and online use, and though this is still pending, it opened doors to explore immersive soundscapes. Additionally, through collaborations at a local open-air cinema event, I connected with Blackbeam, specialists in outdoor cinematic and immersive projections, who showed interest in supporting my project.

Ultimately, these experiences led me to pivot towards a meta-visual essay centred on representations of forests in contemporary visual and sound cultures. This shift, coupled with guidance on ambisonics, spurred me to experiment with spatial sound production—a daring leap forward in my artistic journey.

The Race into Spatial

To begin this project, I prepared field and foley recordings using a Zoom H2N in surround mode and contact mics attached to trees in a local forest. I aimed to explore the possibilities of ambisonic sound design, experimenting with the IEM ambisonic plugin suite and Reaper's 5.1 surround sound tools. However, technical issues, such as plugin compatibility with my computer and the lack of access to the university’s advanced multi-speaker ambisonic facilities, made it challenging to refine and mix my experiments.

Given these limitations, I pivoted to a binaural sound format. This approach was practical for online platforms and smartphone listeners, requiring only headphones for an immersive experience. Binaural audio, while a retro technique with a cult following, has recently gained popularity due to the rise of headphone usage in social media, streaming, and VR. Inspired by its accessibility and relevance, I purchased the DearVR Pro plugin, which supported binaural output as well as ambisonic and multi-channel formats. It was a game-changer—user-friendly and perfect for this project, even as I plan to explore Dolby Atmos and higher-order ambisonics in the future.

Crafting the Visual-Sonic Journey: A Walk Through the Forest

From Meditative Sound Walks to Fragmented Narratives
My project began with a long, meditative "sound walk" through a forest—nearly 20 minutes of immersive, ambient recordings. This was a deliberate nod to the “relaxing forest walk” videos so popular on YouTube and the slow-burn narrative pacing seen in some films. However, early feedback from a YouTube premiere watch party with friends suggested it was too slow.

Taking the critique to heart, I completely restructured the video into a more fragmented, non-linear form. This approach drew inspiration from, of course, Lynch, but also Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, where threads and themes interweave and make full sense only when the piece is experienced in its entirety. Similarly, I referenced Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, borrowing its dream logic and disruptive narrative style to challenge conventional storytelling. Found footage and bricolage techniques, reminiscent of filmmakers like Adam Curtis and Julien Temple, also influenced the aesthetic.

For example, the loud sound and visual jump scare after the opening titles was a deliberate nod to horror tropes and a homage to Buñuel’s infamous eyeball-cutting scene—a moment designed to shock the audience awake.

The Allure of the Sound Walk
I was fascinated by the proliferation of YouTube videos showcasing “relaxing” walks through forests or scenic landscapes. These videos, typically created with a steady cam and on-camera microphone, often rack up thousands of views and heartfelt comments from viewers seeking moments of peace.

This phenomenon intersects with sound walk practices in community arts, often promoted as exercises in mindfulness and well-being. Participants are guided through familiar environments and encouraged to pay close attention to their immediate sound ecology. It’s a legacy of the 1960s pioneers like the World Soundscape Project, Luc Ferrari, and Bernie Krause, and an area I’ve explored in my previous work.

For this project, I drew on my August field recordings from Haldon Forest near Exeter—capturing walkers, joggers, cyclists, conversations, and the forest’s ambient hum. While I layered in a few found sound effects for added texture, most of the audio was sourced directly from the environment.

To add a layer of self-reflection, I referenced Hildegard Westerkamp’s sound walks, where she embeds herself in the landscape with a reflective narrative. Instead of using my own voice, I incorporated “found audio” from an amateur mindfulness sound walker, subtly pastiching the idea of the producer as the “author” of the piece.

Challenging Neutrality in Field Recording
This project also pushed me to question the long-standing notion of "neutral" sound capture. During my MA field recording module, I produced a day-long recording, on my birthday during the Covid lockdown, in Jan 2021, with commentary that was later edited into an hour-long piece. I was thrilled to have it broadcast on London’s experimental radio station, Resonance FM, and featured on the field recording platform Framework Radio.

https://frameworkradio.net/2022/03/792-2022-03-13/

Through this experience, I became aware of debates around the ethics and implications of field recording. Mark Peter Wright’s book Field of Dreams: Listening After Nature critiques the colonial roots of field recording, highlighting how it historically served anthropological disciplines tied to exploitation. Wright argues that the concept of a "neutral" or "natural" recording is a myth—nature and culture are always intertwined.

This resonated with me, especially as sound walks and field recordings often romanticize the rural idyll, imposing an outsider's gaze onto “untouched” environments. Jordan and Spring echo this in their discussions of soundwalks: “Microphone placement and other factors all but guarantee that recorded sound is not a reproduction but rather a representation.”

These ideas directly informed the next section of the project, pushing me to embrace constructed soundscapes rather than striving for an impossible objectivity.

https://markpeterwright.net/listening-after-nature

The Forest as Social Construct / The Forest as Personal Memory

Having produced audio walking guides before, I initially considered creating one for Cookworthy Forest. However, unlike storied locations like The New Forest or Sherwood Forest, Cookworthy doesn’t have much folklore or historical gravitas. Instead, what emerged was a personal socio-cultural and psychogeographic exploration—a reflection of my childhood in the 1970s, growing up in this lesser-known corner of Devon.

Using my field recordings, I reconstructed a soundscape that blends Cookworthy’s current sonic environment with the echoes of memories it evokes for me: chainsaws, trains, and even ice cream vans. These sounds represent more than just ambient noise—they carry a deeply personal significance. To tie them together, I recorded a casual, oral history-style narrative, processed with an "old radio" EQ filter and reverb. This choice wasn’t just aesthetic; it alludes to the homemade radio shows I recorded as a child and my later career producing radio shows for the BBC.

This reflective tone also links to themes of hauntology, something I’ve explored in previous work. Hauntology, as critics like Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher discuss, refers to a sense of longing for lost futures—utopias that never came to pass—and the melancholia of their absence. For me, Cookworthy embodies this idea. It was once a bustling working forest, providing pulp timber for industry and sustaining a community of forestry workers like my dad. Today, it’s marketed by Forestry England as a destination for leisure:

“A great location for interesting walks, afternoon runs, and enjoying the great outdoors. Come and explore Cookworthy Forest's network of tracks and rights of way by foot, horse, or bike.”

While I appreciate its new purpose, it feels bittersweet—similar, I imagine, to how former coal miners must feel about seeing old pits turned into heritage sites. Cookworthy was a place where people lived, worked, loved, and struggled. It wasn’t just a scenic backdrop but a space filled with real lives and stories—many of them unspoken, as I referenced in the video.

Memory, Trauma, and the Myth of the Rural Idyll

In reflecting on Cookworthy, I wanted to challenge the romanticized image of the countryside—the myth of the jolly, red-faced simple folk. My narrative touches on my parents’ wartime and domestic traumas, and how those shaped our lives in this working-class rural environment. It’s a bit Cider with Rosie, perhaps, but also has shades of James Joyce.

Christine van Boheemen-Saaf’s Joyce, Derrida, Lacan, and the Trauma of History resonates here. She explores how Joyce’s work serves as an indirect way of “witnessing” histories that remain unspeakable. In my case, the layers of sound, memory, and narrative attempt to express something similar—memories and experiences that don’t neatly fit into words.

Ruby Country and Rural Gentrification

The section on Ruby Country continues this theme of shifting rural identities. Ruby Country, named after the Ruby Red Devon cattle, is a relatively new brand for this area of West Devon, coined for tourism marketing after the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak. Growing up here, I never heard it referred to as such.

For this section, I took the soundtrack from a tourist promotional video and deliberately “de-familiarized” it. By processing and distorting the audio with reverbs, tape delays, flanging, and echoes, I aimed to make the familiar strange. This was interspersed with synthesized drones, bleeps, and some of my original music, creating a soundscape that feels disjointed yet evocative.

Visually and sonically, this section draws inspiration from the analogue techniques of early avant-garde filmmakers like Michael Snow, Len Lye, and Stan Brakhage. While the tools I used were digital, the ethos of experimentation and defamiliarization remained the same, creating a collage that captures the fractured relationship between past and present.

This project isn’t just about Cookworthy Forest—it’s about what the forest means. It’s about how spaces, especially rural ones, hold layers of history, memory, and emotion. By weaving together sound, visuals, and narrative, I hoped to create something that invites listeners to consider the unseen stories within their own environments and what it means when those stories are rewritten over time.

The Forest as Social Construct / The Forest as Horror, Memory, and Melancholy

An experimental film often breaks from traditional storytelling, relying on abstract techniques—out-of-focus shots, rapid editing, asynchronous sound, or no soundtrack at all—to engage viewers in a more active, reflective relationship with the work. Many such films take a critical stance against mainstream culture. Inspired by this ethos, my sound design for this project aims to expose the constructed nature of rural imagery and soundscapes in popular culture. I used experimental juxtapositions, contrapuntal elements, and deliberate defamiliarization, rejecting realist sound design in favour of abstraction.

The 2018 film Antrum was a key influence. Marketed as a “cursed” movie with subliminal satanic imagery and unsettling, non-diegetic sound design, its conceit is, of course, a hoax—much like the viral mythology surrounding The Blair Witch Project. Yet, even knowing this, Antrum is deeply disquieting. Similarly, I sought to play with sound’s ability to unsettle by layering manipulated recordings: tree creaks processed through Paulstretch, reverbs, and EQ; found sounds distorted into eerie drones; and binaural mixes that invite unease.

These techniques reflect broader themes of tension between tourism and rural life, particularly in the West Country. The “ant” motif, for example, nods to the local slang “emmets” (ants) for tourists, as well as to visual metaphors for anxiety—like the famous ant scene in Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou. This sense of unease extends to my reflections on the melancholy and surreal nature of my upbringing. Now in my 60s, I look back on my childhood in Cookworthy Forest with a mix of nostalgia and detachment. The oddities of my early life—like the eccentric twins who lived in a coal shed—resonate more strongly now, prompting comparisons to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Lynch uses rural, small-town America and its oddball characters. The jarring soundscapes and surreal imagery deeply inform my own work, particularly in moments like the swirling, creaking tree canopy shot, which merges digital manipulation with contact mic recordings.

Forest as Horror: Folk, Fear, and the Monstrous

Forests have long been a setting for horror—places of isolation and threat, often embodying the tension between urban visitors and rural locals. Folk horror, a subgenre rooted in rural superstition and paganism, has seen a revival in films like Alex Garland’s Men, the Welsh-language The Feast, and Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men. Jenkin’s earlier film Bait explored the fraught dynamics between Cornish locals and tourists, using retro experimental techniques.

My project draws on these influences while incorporating clips and soundscapes from classics of rural horror, such as The Evil Dead, The Blair Witch Project, and Wrong Turn. For instance, I reworked the infamous assault scene from The Evil Dead, recording it off-screen with a phone camera and micro-editing it alongside abstract flicker imagery. These sequences echo the psychedelic horror of Dario Argento and more recent films like Annihilation.

Sound design plays a crucial role in heightening tension. I blended binaural recordings, synthesized drones, disruptive noise, and horror staples like accent bangs and risers. Dialogue clips from horror films were cleaned and processed with RX plugins, then layered with these elements to create an unsettling atmosphere. By eschewing traditional continuity, I hope to evoke Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection—the collapse of meaning that arises from the breakdown of identity and boundaries between self and other.

Fred Botting’s notion of “the monstrous” also informs the work. In Gothic literature, the monstrous represents transgression, fear, and social exclusion, as seen in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Here, the forest becomes a site of abjection and monstrosity—an uncanny, liminal space where boundaries blur, and the familiar becomes alien.

Memory, Intertextuality, and Experimentation

Throughout the project, I’ve used intertextual references to deepen the sense of unease and nostalgia. Visual nods to surrealist works like Un Chien Andalou and Munch’s The Scream function as what Hitchcock called MacGuffins—details that draw attention while serving the broader narrative. Similarly, I experimented with juxtaposing sound and image, such as fading in the Twin Peaks theme during a memory sequence. Though I’m still undecided if this is too heavy-handed, the intention was to evoke Lynch’s signature strangeness.

The forest in this project is not just a setting but a construct—a site of collective and personal memory, melancholy, and horror. It’s a space where nostalgia collides with unease, where sound and image are fractured to expose the layers of artifice beneath. By deconstructing the rural idyll and its representations, I aim to leave viewers with a lingering sense of detachment and curiosity—an invitation to question the stories we tell about nature, the past, and ourselves.

The Forest as a Site of Healing & Well-Being / Sound Bathing, Chimes, and Drones

This section serves as an ironic critique of the socio-cultural and class-driven aspects of the “forest as healing” narrative and the pseudoscience surrounding sound bathing. While I am curious about practices like binaural beats and forest sound bathing, I remain sceptical of their exaggerated claims—such as increased creativity, well-being, and even miraculous cellular repair, as purported by proponents of pure tones like the so-called “healing” 528 Hz frequency. For example, the promotional videos promising these effects (e.g., YouTube) are ripe for both parody and critique.

To explore this, I included an example of these immersive “therapeutic” soundscapes but deconstructed and undermined their claims. For the psychedelic sound-bathing section, I applied kaleidoscopic mirroring effects to forest footage, paired with a swirling binaural drone I created, evoking a hypnotic, almost sci-fi atmosphere. Toward the end of the piece, I juxtaposed pure tones (423 Hz and 528 Hz) with abstract, swirling visuals. Rather than offering a comforting experience, I presented these elements confrontationally, challenging the viewer to question their so-called healing properties.

The convenience store scene from Episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return influenced my approach here. I also generated binaural tones with an online brainwave generator (MyNoise) and manipulated them to create unsettling contrasts. Unlike in the horror sections, I refrained from adding noise or feedback, focusing instead on the polished, quasi-mystical aesthetic of these pseudoscientific sound practices.

The Forest as Hyperreality

This section examines the forest as a hyperreal construct, as represented in video games like The Forest, which provided footage for this project. Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality and the postmodern breakdown between signifier and signified informed my approach. Initially, I considered creating surreal, hyperreal sound effects to overdub on the gameplay footage, but early attempts leaned too comedic. Instead, I opted for a layered, cacophonous soundscape: a mix of Wikileaks footage of U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, noise sculpture, and an industrial splinter-core track of my creation. The resulting machine-gun-like rhythms, paired with the gameplay visuals, evoke a sense of media overload and the disorienting blurring of reality and simulation.

I also incorporated a reference to Magritte’s This is Not a Pipe, using sound design to explore the idea of representation. Just as Magritte’s painting questions the relationship between image and meaning, sound design often relies on “beautiful lies.” For example, the sound of frying bacon might, in context, signify rain. This detachment of sound from its source mirrors Baudrillard’s notion of simulation.

The project’s final section employs a vaporwave-inspired aesthetic, blending hyperreal visuals with a melancholic, redemptive tone. The music was created using AI platform AIVA, influenced by my compositions. Although the AI-generated piece felt surprisingly emotional, I refined it further in post-production. The end credits feature a mash-up I created as a DJ: Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode—a tale of a rural boy “way back up in the woods”—merged with The Cure’s A Forest, a darker narrative of existential dread. This juxtaposition encapsulates the project’s themes of nostalgia, fear, and the multifaceted meanings of the forest.

Final Reflections

The opening quote from David Farr—“The forest has always been a place, in fairy tales and in Shakespeare, where you go and discover who you are…”—nicely encapsulates the project’s themes. The forest operates as a metaphor for personal and collective challenges, whether as a site of trauma, healing, or hyperreality.

As a mature student balancing part-time study, the COVID pandemic, and life’s other demands, I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. Completing this project felt like an ordeal, much like the transformative journeys often depicted in forests. While I recognize areas for technical improvement, I feel my conceptual approach and ideas have grown significantly.

There’s a saying in music and sound production: “All the gear but no idea.” I may not have all the gear yet, but through this process, I’ve gained confidence in my ideas and the technical skills to bring them to life.

With huge thanks to my tutor and course leader, Jan Meinema