\\||//\\||//||//\\||//||\\||// (a two bar relationship)

Abstract

‘a two bar relationship’ is a large scale public artwork inspired by the Atrium building’s history, its current use as a place of creative learning, and its engagement with sound and music. The sculpture is a framework of galvanised steel, the type you would usually see used as scaffolding poles throughout the city. Rising up through the pavement, it is the visual representation of a sound wave, a sound wave captured within the cavernous basement directly beneath the sculpture, a space that can neither be accessed, nor seen.

In developing the work, I worked collaboratively with a number of sound engineering students at the University of South Wales,to document the basement of the building, a former telephone exchange, sonically, using Impulse Capture. This is a technology typically used to capture spaces such as concert halls, so that a producer can use the captured ‘space’ in a studio to recreate the specific acoustics onto a dry sample. It is also a method used by games designers looking to create realistic sound effects for digital spaces. Through Impulse Capture, we can understand a space through sound. ‘a two bar relatiosnhip’ takes this process one step further, translating the sound wave captured beneath our feet, back into a physical presence, and in a way that can be seen by publicly. The sculpture attempts to represent an aural image of space.

‘a two bar relationship’ exists both outside and inside the ATRiuM building. Inside ATRiuM is a sound installation that uses the Impulse Capture technology in a very different way, translating the live sounds of a corridor that architecturally mirrors the basement into the underground space of the basement. The installation records incidental live sounds created in the space by the staff and students; small details and moments of space which are fed through a computer and back out through speakers in the space, as if they are somehow coming from the basement.