Unheard Sounds
Binaural Audio walk, 2007.
Feast MA Exposition, Nottingham Trent University

Visitors to the exhibition were invited to borrow an MP3 player and go on a guided walk. With the unsettling preamble: 'I usually only hear it at night', the narrator takes the listener on a journey, directing them down steps, round corners, through doors, to a dark space where ' the air feels heavy and damp, making it hard to breathe' and where a moving black shadow appears just at the edge of vision. The narrator's superstitions ('I try to avoid the white tape on the stairs') and fears ('we're being followed...') are reinforced by sinister music, strategically placed, and by the ambient sounds of accompanying footsteps, of doors opening right on cue, of drilling, banging, a gasp of fear, thunder, running water, the echo of a voice, a brief, muffled commotion and then, the narrator's voice stops - silence - until another voice, as if over a two-way radio, announces the discovery of a dead body.
Listening to the recording, our awareness is heightened at the same time as it is bemused, disorientated: the particular qualities of binaural recording create a 360- degree experience of sound which blurs the line between fiction and reality, so that we are thrown off-balance, unsure what is 'live sound' and what is recorded: prey to our own imagination.

- Deborah Dean

Visual Art & Exhibitions Manager, Nottingham City Museums and Galleries