Beating Tones and Flapping Wings

Site-specific installation commissioned by Sound and Music for the Cut and Splice Festival 2010. Sound installation with 40 boom boxes and 2 flying radios.

In the last 500 years, the standard 'A' to which musicians tune their instruments has varied widely from 403Hz to 567Hz before settling at the currently agreed 440Hz. A precise 440Hz sine tone has been recorded onto 40 cassette tapes: when these are played back on machines of varying quality and age, the result is a chorus of tones clustered around 440Hz which interfere with each other to cause a pulsing phenomenon known as beat frequencies, the perception of which changes according to the position of the listener and the inconsistencies of tape speed.

The flying radios are inspired by the pigeons which no doubt inhabited Wilton’s Music Hall during its years of dereliction: one of the boom boxes is transmitting to the flying radios a set of Shepard Tones, the aural equivalent of an optical illusion which gives the impression of a tone which rises in pitch continuously, forever.