The idea for this piece is derived from the ‘Zandmotor’ project. In 2011 a large amount of sand was added to the Dutch coast, a little ways south of Scheveningen. The natural forces (wind, waves and tides) then distribute all this sand along the coast. The progression over the last 10 years is clearly visible. In this composition, these 10 years of smoothing out and absorption by nature is compressed into one hour.

To construct my composition, I took some synthesized elements and field recordings of the beach. The choice of elements came from the idea that the Zandmotor is a human made construction. However, it is made with natural material which then gets absorbed and distributed by nature itself. The composition starts out with these synthesized sounds —  created with the Behringer XENYX 1002FX mixer, with the use of the no-input mixing technique — and then slowly morphs into the field recording of the beach. The synthesized sounds, in a way, also get absorbed by the field recording. This is done by using amplitude tracking on the wind gusts and having that influence the synthesized sounds. This way, these sounds slowly dissolve into the field recording, until only the recording is audible. This way, it creates a landscape morphology that shifts from the ambiguous virtual (synthesized) to the real (raw field recording) as it smooths out, like the sand along the coast.

Buried in the back of the composition is a tonal voice, following a harmonic progression. This too acts as a human made addition with synthesized effect. It acts as another synthetic element in landscape morphology, as well as giving a nod to a prominent aspect of radio, the voice.