Artangel Commission London UK November 1998
Surface Noise 2.0: Sonarmatica Festival Spain June 2001
Commissioned to create a work around the city of London this work took a red double-decker bus as it’s focus. Making a route determined by overlaying the sheet music from London Bridge is Falling Down onto a map of London, I recorded the sounds and images at points where the notes fell on the cityscape. These co-ordinates provided the score for the piece and by using software that translated images into sound and original source recordings, I was able to mix the work live on each journey through a speaker system we installed throughout the bus, as it followed the original walk shuttling between Big Ben and St Paul’s Cathedral.
Through the brief space of a bus journey the work drew upon many of our common reserves of sonic recognition, mingling the folk memory of the nursery rhyme, the background roar of traffic and the private sounds we make secure in the knowledge that no one else is listening.
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