The Sounds of the Playhouse
Binaural Audio Walk, 2007.
Offsite MA group exhibition, The Playhouse, Nottingham

The Sounds of the Playhouse is a direct response to the Playhouse Theatre and a recent showing of the mystery thriller 'I Have Been Here Before' by J.B. Priestly. The play was based on the Russian philosopher P.D.Ouspensky’s theory about individuals repeating their life cycle unless they can seize opportunities to free themselves from repeating past errors.
This theory informs the binaural audio walk when changes in time, space and the narrative occur, distorting the listeners reality and physical surroundings with suggestions from the past.

Visitors follow the artists directions through the Playhouse Theatre and become involved in the stories embedded in the recorded instructions and suggestions. At the end of the walk listeners find themselves in a noisy bar, a telephone rings and an edgy voice instructs the participant to ‘collect a black briefcase with a red handle’ that has been left by a man positioned outside behind the Sky Mirror sculpture, with the added warning that they ‘don’t have much time left and to be careful because everyone is listening’. However the last suggestion to collect a briefcase was just a ploy to discover how immersed the listener became in the fictional reality that had been created.

The walk uses binaural audio- a means of recording that achieves incredibly precise three- dimensional sound to create an experience of physical immediacy and complexity.