This is the fourth in a series of Audio Guides. Each Audio Guide defines a 1km² area of ground. The area is delineated by matching a single pixel from a satellite image to a topographic map of the same area at a 1:1 scale.

The Audio Guides began as attempts to reclaim digitised areas of land by recording and describing them with analogue sound. They have evolved in relation to their subject and have become as much to do with the relationship between language and property. This Audio Guide has been produced from recordings by a small group of Ridley Road Market traders who are familiar with the 1km² area, many having lived and worked in the market for generations. It finds the market on the verge of collapse as many of the traders fight for survival in an increasingly hostile environment. The guide is read by them and includes recordings of ambient sounds particular to their experience. This guide differs from ealier guides as the particular nature of market traders repetitve language was used as the impetous to edit the spoken word into looped repetitions.

Although the guides have the appearance of an object with a utilitarian function they are intended more as an audio archive of a momentary acoustic sculpture – an arbitrary square of sound that can replayed and re-con-textualised in time. Because this is a square that is defined by sound it defies the natural and manmade physical barriers, and those by which history and time are predominantly measured. It was important that this Audio Guide was recorded with Market traders.

The Guides are hand printed in a limited edition of 100 using silkscreen and CD-R.

  track listing on silk screened CD-R publication | edition of 100 | market traders audio guide, Hackney | 2008