AT-TA Network

The Listening Room is the simplest technology I can think of to try and work with the sound of a room in such a way that it asks people to listen to the space they're in. I see it as a basic system that I permutate and adapt on each occasion, positioning mics and speakers and fine-tuning a room. Because the technology is basic it is very flexible- like any simple tool, a hammer or screwdriver.

I don't change the technology much, in fact over the series of installations I've simplified some aspects of it. The central principle is to work with what is already there, the room resonances and reverberation. The installations vary considerably according to a number of factors, principally to do with the space it is in. The reverberation and size of the space is the most important factor. The ICC lounge is just about the smallest one I've ever made, the room has relatively little natural reverberation - as a consequence the installation is very quiet and very subtle. This one reacts mostly to the movement of people in the space, whereas versions of the work in larger spaces also react more to sounds that people make, speech, singing and so on. This is a matter of scale - the size of the space determines the volume of the installation. One of my central concerns is to maintain the work at a human scale, not to let it get too loud so that it overwhelms the contribution of the visitor to the space. So here I have been concentrating on very reduced, very quiet variants.

I'm tempted to think of the reaction of viewers as culturally based, although there are other factors to do with the particular installation that they are in, such as volume etc. Australians made bird calls and sang a lot, the Japanese seem to be very quiet and serene within the space although I noticed that some people wanted to tap the microphone to make something happen (it doesn't - tapping the microphone will shut down the cycle of feedback). Maybe that's because the Australian room was in the middle of a nature reserve and was very big and reverberant - and in ICC the microphones are very prominent. But generally I think most people start listening to the space. I've been told that some people have been spending a very long time in the ICC installation.

This is the first installation with windows. I didn't think about the view - having to decide on the space from photos and plans I had no idea what would be outside until I got to Tokyo in July. I wanted the glass for acoustic reflection and opened the blinds to make the most of this. But I'm happy with the view - there's an aspect to all this which is to do with transparency, demystifying the process and the fact that there's all this activity across the city visible but mostly inaudible from this particular situation reinforces this emphasis on the moment within the space. Having worked for many years in recording studios I'm always happy to have windows. Earlier installations in windowless spaces weren't necessarily more confined - I generally have the lights as bright as possible to stop any pseudo-mystic associations and often the spaces I work in have been very large, maybe 20 times the size of the ICC lounge. One other factor with these spaces is that sound from outside leaks in and contributes to the sound of the installation and maybe that opens the space up in a way.

Pillars usually don't make much difference except at ICC, again because of the scale the pillars mask areas and reflections from the pillars create hot spots where the feedback will shift considerably if you're standing there. Architectural factors, wall surfaces, ceiling shapes, floor coverings play a big part in defining the sound of a space anyway - usually I'll choose a site because of the natural echo. I'm very wary of false walls, timber frames with plasterboard or some similar covering. These are acoustically transparent to low frequencies but reflect high frequencies, so the low sounds go right through the wall and reflect somewhere else in the building. This can make the installation very uncomfortable, internally out of tune - the really big problem is that the viewer is hearing something different to what is visible. One of my principles is that the sound should refer to the space that produces it.

Stairwell (untitled) is a double system which is constantly reacting to itself. It is loud (by my standards) and there a quite a few factors that differentiate it from the meditative aspects of other pieces I've made - it is a space of transition - people don't usually hang around in a stairwell, it's an irregular shape and the balance of the sound of the two systems is irregular too, defined by the shape of the space. There's no delay, no recording going on, but any sound you make can unpredictably appear amplified from an unexpected direction. The microphones are positioned to maximise the interplay of anyone in the space with the systems, so in that sense there is a very close audio surveillance of the space.

As I always maintain, there's no deliberate metaphor implied, any associations are introduced by the participant but I do have to admit that it's definitely slightly creepy. But then it's quite a strange design of stairwell in the first place.

With all this body of work I'm looking at the way we deal with sound - recorded sound has only become commonplace within the last century so biologically it's something new for us as a species. When I'm having a bath I sometimes feel strangely privileged that I can listen to music on the radio - a century ago I would have had to have a bigger bathroom and hire a string quartet.

Our hearing is a very precise tool yet we constantly render it ineffective - I'm always amazed at the volume of background music in bars, particularly in England (bars in Tokyo are generally much quieter in my experience). Over the last century background noise in cities has risen exponentially - mostly because of traffic. Maybe this is all because I grew up in the countryside... I'm trying to find a way to engage positively with this, to make it an more rewarding experience through being more conscious of what we are hearing all the time.

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This text was based on the exhibition at ICC, Tokyo, "Sounding Spaces" in 2003.

Exhibition Catalog (JP/EN) : please contact NTT Publishing.