| Listening
to the Architecture, Clerkenwell
Magistrates' Court An installation for the launch event of BBC2's Restoration project
Installation Notebook
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Eight days to install, an hour to pack down. My thanks to to Crissij and Clare who made it happen, invigilators Kelly, Duncan and the twins and to Aaron, Dean, Steve and Scary Steve who provided help at key points where help was sorely needed.
| Thursday
7aug03 The installation is finally exposed to the public - the BBC launch seemed to go very well, a great atmosphere on a beautiful evening. A lot of people in the installation space throughout the event. The work has become more interesting with visitors in the space, the modulation of the intertwining feedbacks has a simple natural complexity - better than I dared hope for. |
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The volume level seems appropriate for the number of visitors and manages to cope with a variety of eccentric behaviour including An Actor who read the witness oath in best booming English Actor fashion and various others who took the chance to play the part of a hang 'em and flog 'em judge in a disturbingly accomplished manner.
Britain's trains are in chaos because of the high temperatures threatening to buckle the rails. So I was especially pleased that Michael Stanley, curator from Ikon, endured a three hour train trip from Birmingham to see the piece. Michael is curating the next series of installations in September. In conversation during the evening he raised and questioned precisely the issues that I'm raising in this notebook so maybe I am on the right track. Unlike the trains.
| Wednesday
6aug03 Before finally fixing everything down one last check on positioning and levels with people moving around the space. Anyone around who is involved in the production comes in after lunch, (Steve, the other Steve, Simon, Sonia and Clare in the picture, more outside the frame). The installation behaved, I'm confident that it's tough enough to withstand the attentions of 500 people tomorrow. All equipment apart from microphones and loudspeakers has been moved out of sight. This is for a number of reasons - I don't want to make an exhibition of technology - introducing a visual complication into the situation. |
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Cable runs are more difficult than usual because the location is grade 2 listed - the wood panelling must not be damaged so nothing can be nailed down. Cables are temporarily held in place with a combination of blu-tack and gaffa tape, then fixed with silicon and the temporary fix removed when the silicon has set. For the silicon idea I have to thank Ray Burns, the superbly helpful Tate technician. Some cable paths through the fixed furniture of the witness box etc require inventive solutions, the last detail tomorrow is to paint some cables where no alternative pathway is possible.
Tuesday 5aug03
Everything in position pending a final check tomorrow. Cleaning, tidying up and preparing the space for cable runs.
Monday 4aug03
Tweaking and balancing. The microphone for system 3 had previously been facing a door and I was mostly testing with the door open. With the door closed, the feedback frequency changes and things become unbalanced, the pitch of the system 3 chain begins to feed into system 1 (where the active field is most equally spread through the space) and the whole room develops a tendency to become monophonic on this dominant note. I added another mic at the back of the room into system 3 and rebalanced so that both are active, broadening the range of the active space and offsetting the effect of the closed door.
Sunday 3aug03
A heatwave is underway, 34 degrees today. The painters in the car park have been working since early this morning and are variously suffering from paint fumes and heat.
Another loudspeaker is now mounted high up near the ceiling forming a symmetry with yesterday's. A little tweaking and it begins to work - the three systems are playing a kind of tune with the room. This is probably a key moment in the development of this installation so I recorded the empty room for a while.
Over the last year or so I have been recording each stage of the setup process of each installation with some idea that this might reveal the creative process. Or at least the working process. Difficult - the whole experience of the sound of each space is so dependent on the physical relationship of the listener to the space. I think the tapes reveal when it's not working, when the feedback is too dominant or uncomfortably out of tune or when the transducers are positioned badly in the space. When it is working the recording is fairly meaningless, as I have written elsewhere on this website, '...a recording is an inaedequate representation of the experience, you had to be there'.
Saturday 2aug03
Last night I decided that the problems with system 1 could be solved with a delay approximately doubling the size of the room.
The original 'Listening to the Architecture' in Helsinki involved a delay in part of the signal path. This created the sound of a bigger space than the already cavernous gallery. This was a matter of emphasis, to draw the attention of the listener to the scale of the space.
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So I'm trying this again - partly for the emphasis on the
space and partly because the sound of this system would be slightly
differentiated from the other two systems, clarifying the interplay of
the three. One of the system 1 speakers is mounted high up near the
ceiling to try and involve the sound of the whole space in the piece.
Seems to be working... |
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Friday 1aug03
The second full day in Court 2. A lot of rain earlier so the basic installation has been on for a while in a static situation to see what happens as the equipment warms up or the humidity changes. It seems fairly stable, starting up sounding much like when I switched off last night.
The installation and the interplay between the systems and the space is fascinating but physically the effect on my hearing makes it exhausting being in here for any length of time, like listening to test tones in a recording studio. I have to leave the room every 20 minutes or so as the high frequencies in particular get to me.
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Today's main activity is moving mics and speakers around,
looking for nodes in the space where the presence of people will
articulate the systems. System 3 is sounding good, 2 has the
highest note and shortest gate time, sounding something like a bowed
cymbal and appears less reactive to interference. System 1, the
length of the room is not set up properly, I'm a bit worried about
getting the speakers up high at the back of the room - my natural and
perfectly reasonable fear of heights has made me abandon today's
attempts to hoist a speaker up there. I need to try some
temporary positions but I'm also worried about safety - if someone
tripped on a cable everything could come crashing down, but it's
difficult to fix anything at this stage as the building is Grade 2
listed - I can't drill into walls and I only need to check a speaker
position for a few minutes, so everything is temporary. |
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Thursday 31jul03 |
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Tuesday 29jul03
Assembling speakers, testing and checking cables prior to moving everything to the location tomorrow.
Monday 28jul03
Still working offsite, Dean Whatmuff is building new speakers for me down the road and I am rebuilding old speakers in my studio, writing statements and suffering from a bad cold.
