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Cairn Gorm: Unfolding Landscape, Sound and Vista

Watson seeks, through embedded artworks, to condition ways that the particulars of this landscape can be seen, valued and ultimately more fully understood; essentially interpretive but not itself mere interpretation. An earlier commission resulted in works within the base station of the mountain railway: Hidden Landscape: Text & Image (Watson and Rice, 2006).

Hundreds of tonnes of earth and rock were moved in the creation of these works and wallers worked over two and half years in their construction. The works focus on three substantial structures along a raised path. A Northern Viewpoint (Watson and Maclean 2007–2009), is an earthwork with stonewalling; A Storytelling Chair (Watson with Robertson 2008–2009) is incorporated within a circular wall accessed by a massive stone stairway; and A Piper’s Typology (Watson 2010–2013) is embedded in a drystone wall. Despite the huge scale of this intervention it is, within the scope of the mountain landscape, unexpectedly low key. Associative meaning is carried through sound – real or implied. Water cascades down stone buttresses into sound-enhancing pools; these form an aural backdrop to the reading of place names and lines of Ossianic verse cast into bronze plates under which water from the mountain flows. Motion sensors trigger recordings of the late Scots traveller, Stanley Robertson’s folktales, whilst bronze casts of key variations in the form of Scots pipes suggest their music. However, their accompanying tune names explicitly tie them to the landscapes of their origin, some of which are visible from the site – ‘Creag Eileachaidh’ (a Piobaireachd) or the ‘Rothie Murchas Rant’ (a Strathspey).

The overall project successfully counterbalances the substantial developments of this part of Cairn Gorm for winter sports over the last fifty years, giving year-round visitors an opportunity to broaden their understanding of the mountain through an engagement with its cultural underpinning.