FROM CITY LIFE TO THE WILD

a journey in pictures and music

By The IK Foundation

February 27^th, 2022

I am a Londoner and have lived in the centre for ten years. A thirty minute walk from my doorstep brings you through Hyde Park, down Oxford Street, over Piccadilly Circus and onto the River Thames. It is loud, hectic, smelly and you are never truly away from the city. At night we are awoken by police helicopters or the distinct sound of a drunk yelling in the streets. Five o’clock in the morning the traffic starts and the building is buzzing with activity as our neighbours get ready for work.

My work also involves noise. I compose music for advertising, film and TV. The studios I work from are a hive of activity, recording everything from choirs to heavy metal. In essence I am surrounded by noise all day, everyday. Due to the cost of living in London my work is always structured around profit margins, meaning creativity is always paid for and I never have the time to work on something which is not commissioned.

In 2019, after a long week I am sitting in-front of my piano, struggling to complete a jovial string composition for a BBC program on antique hunting. I receive a phone call from an old friend asking me if I was interested in joining an expedition to the Artic, my role would be to compose music inspired by the environment and provide my expertise in audio recording in the field. Six months later I am leaving London with a laptop, keyboard, headphones and the warmest clothes I own ready to travel north. I also pack with me my Voigtländer 35mm film camera, something I always carry when I travel ready to document the journey.

Fourteen hours travelling via Oslo and we have landed in a settlement called Longyearbyen in Svalbard. Instead of a busy terminal on the outskirts of a major city we arrive in a small industrial unit on the edge of a village. The building has solar panels on the exterior walls not the roof because the sun is never high enough in the sky. There is a local bus which takes passengers into the settlement, but despite the “beware of polar bear signs” we want to stretch our legs and walk.

We walk to the docks and board a ship, the MS Origo. This expedition ship will be our home and base for the next seven days and will take us deep into the Arctic Ocean to an uninhabited island. On this island we set up an autonomous field station – The Field Station | Naturae Observatio | Martin’s Eye – which is designed to observe the weather, take pictures and audio recordings of the surrounding landscape for twelve months without any human involvement. Once I have set up and tested all the audio equipment I am left to experience the wilderness, be inspired and write whatever music I feel like with no restrictions.

MUSIC

Whilst onboard MS Origo I composed three pieces, which are now part of The IK Foundation archive. They are a historical representation of the expedition and are used in a multitude of presentations commissioned by The IK Foundation.

FOG

The first piece is a simple and sparse number titled “Fog”. This piece was inspired by one of our polar bear guards who mentioned on the first day that the bears were super intelligent and would creep up on humans in order to attack. If fog descended whilst we were working on the field station we would have to immediately retreat to the boat. The piece is solo piano and evokes feelings of isolation, mystique, excitement and fear; exactly what I encountered when away from the safety of the boat.

THE LINNAEUS APOSTLES

The second piece the "Linnaeus Apostles" was inspired partly by a melody I discovered in the Linnaeus Apostles books onboard the ship. I took this small melody and developed it into a piece of modern music. Whilst I was composing the piece there were technical troubles brewing with the camera equipment which was causing a great deal of stress for the tech experts, Jeff and Tom. The piece is very mournful, sad with a serious peaceful feel, the sort of feeling Jeff and Tom felt when they were coming to terms with the unfortunate truth that their camera system was never going to work!

VOYAGE BACK

The final piece "Voyage Back" came out of a conversation I had with Lars (expedition leader) and Mikael (responsible for the safety of polar bears, transport and materials) about the Nordic traditional Sámi singing style called "Joik". I ended up singing a Joik into my iPhone and then emailing myself the file to use on the computer recording. The piece was the last one I wrote as we had completed our mission and were heading back to the harbour. It celebrates the excitement of adventure re-enforced by the emotion of arriving home safely.

Then I am back in London. It is amazing how quickly you become accustomed to new environments and how returning to old environments is painless. I had swapped the motion of the Artic Ocean for the London Underground and the silent wilderness for a noisy metropolis.

I return to work and the quest for financial remuneration continues, but I have a yearning to compose music without boundaries again. Then a company contacts me and asks me to compose music for them, there is no upfront fee and the music would be held in a library and possibly used in the future. Usually I would decline such opportunity, but inspired by the freedom I had in the Artic to create I accepted the commission. What I produced was a series of pieces titled “Sounds Of The Apocalypse”, which are stylistically similar to “Fog”. Sparse, dark landscapes with angular musical elements conjuring images of emptiness and wilderness. To date I have not made any money from these pieces, but that does not concern me, I loved creating them and I still enjoy listening to them today.

IDEA, TEXT & MUSIC BY

WILL CLEMENS

WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO

Jeff Snoxell - for thinking of me

Lars Hansen - for accepting me into The IK Foundation

Måns Bergendal - for providing water colours to illustrate this story

Viveka Hansen - for inspiring the piece "Linnaeus Apostles"

Mikael Johansson and Beate Flak - for protecting me from the bears and becoming great friends

SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS

All pictures, except for the urban images of London, are part of the project BRIDGE BUILDER EXPEDITIONS SPITSBERGEN | By The IK Foundation

ESTATE LONDON | MOUNTAIN SPITSBERGEN

Will Clemens | Lars Hansen

LONDON LANDSCAPE

Will Clemens

TELEVISION CENTRE SIGN | STUDIO

Will Clemens | Private collection

SHIP COASTAL FILM

Lars Hansen & Edited by Adam Proctor

SPITSBERGEN LANDSCAPE

(colour) Lars Hansen | (b/w) Will Clemens

COMPOSER ABOARD THE SHIP

Lars Hansen

WATER COLOURS

Måns Bergendal

LONDON LANDSCAPE

Will Clemens

STUDIO INTERIOR

Private collection

FACTS

Will Clemens is a London based composer who started his career working for the wildlife department at BBC Bristol. The IK Foundation’s “Bridge Builder Expeditions” at Spitsbergen was the first time in years he utilised his field recording skills and the very first time he composed music whilst at sea. He is now the field audio expert and in-house composer for The IK Foundation.

The FIELD STATION | NATURAE OBSERVATIO is a unique and tested autonomous micro field station system developed to observe biospheres without disturbing Nature. It is adapted to be flexible, field dignified and robust. A platform for scientific observations as well as documentation of a landscape, developed by a group of international specialists led by The IK Foundation as an enterprise project ‘To understand Planet Earth’.