A Position Between Two Curves site specific installation

A Position Between Two Curves is a site specific public installation at the Tate Britain that was curated as a contribution to the exhibition Days Like These, The Tate Triennial of Contemporary British Art, 27 Feb - 26 May 2003.

The Atterbury Street Manton Entrance of Tate Britain has two alcoves built out of the stone wall at each side of the entrance area, the artist amplified these to act as something like parabolic reflectors, creating a narrow focussed acoustic zone across the entrance where the sound of the space becomes hyper-real. The development of this installation had to cope with a much less controlled situation than the artist’s previous work, high levels of background noise and large numbers of visitors, plus the exposure of microphones to extremes of temperature and humidity - in parallel with this it was important to maintain the scale, volume and complexity at a level which creates a coherent individual experience.

A principle of this body of work is that the visible space must be the same as the acoustic space which the work will explore. Eye and ear and brain on a human scale.

This work consisted of two circuits of microphone, loudspeaker and noise gate. The microphones pick up the ambient sound of the space, acoustically focussed by the curved surfaces at each side of the entrance area and build it up to the point of feedback. This sound is cut off by the noise gate when a defined volume is reached allowing the listener to become part of the process.

The work was documented in the catalogue for Days Like These, edited by Judith Nesbitt and Jonathan Watkins. The artist’s work was considered in two catalogue essays, by Andrew Wilson and by Jonathan Watkins.