Hit The Deck! Doors Closing,Lift Going Down…
As our first exhibition for 2024 reaches its final two weeks, we bring you some words from artist Ian Thompson about his contribution ‘Underground Lift’
For the Lost Portals exhibition, I’ve made a sound piece called Underground Lift. It’s a new version of Ground Lift, installed in the group show Can We Ever Know The Meaning Of These Objects? at Gallery 46, London, in July 2022.
The dominant sound in Underground Lift is white noise, harmonically filtered across a changing spectrum of frequencies to create a sense of transition into an emerging parallel (sound) world. That world may be below ground, through a doorway or window, or in a separate dimension entirely. The listener decides. Other sounds in the work speak for themselves. Describing them would completely break the fourth wall so I won’t.
Although presented as sound art, this work is essentially a musical composition. It has harmonic structure and arrangement, and other identifiable compositional features (not least a beginning, middle, and an end). For the installation there are sculptural elements too. The work is installed at a chosen location in the room and replayed through two custom-made loudspeakers mounted on opposite walls inside an alcove. Audience members sit between the speakers and listen from a fixed position, and the listening volume can’t be altered. If anything defines this as ‘sound art’ it’s probably the degree of agency removed from the listener in the gallery context compared with replaying the work as music at home or on the move.
Visuals: Saturation Point: Red Stripe Blue (40 second clip as viewed from the ‘Underground Lift’)
Audio: Ian Thompson: Underground Lift (40 second clip -BasementArtsProject Mar/Apr 2024
The loudspeakers are positioned 90 degrees to the listeners head at ear level, emulating the effect of wearing headphones but without the sense of being isolated from the rest of the exhibition. I’m keen to avoid headphones when installing sound work, even though this piece is produced in binaural stereo to emulate the natural way in which humans hear in three dimensions, so the full sense of spatial immersion is best experienced while seated in the alcove. Because sound from speakers bleeds into the room, the piece can be heard while viewing Saturation Point and Sarah Sparkes’ work, adding a complementary sensory element to how those pieces are read (in a positive way I like to think).
Uncannily, several hours after installing the work I had an attack of vertigo while walking back to Leeds station from Basement Arts and was unable to spatially orientate myself. With a constant sensation of falling accompanied by severe motion sickness, I spent the entire journey to London locked in the lavatory physically purging in what felt like a very British version of an ayahuasca ceremony; two hours of very unpleasant vomiting on a moving train with no spiritual enlightenment afterwards whatsoever. I was later diagnosed with vestibular neuritis caused by a viral infection in the nerve that sends balance information from my ear to my brain. But was it? Had my spatial sound work in the basement activated a dormant lost portal that opened up where I first experienced the vertigo, on the bridge where Dewsbury Road crosses the M621 at Holbeck Interchange? Maybe the vertigo was a sign and, instead of resisting, I should have let go and trusted it to guide and carry me into another dimension, even if that dimension would probably turn out to be Leeds General Infirmary via the pavement.
Another explanation for my vertigo attack might have something to do with the fact that when viewed from certain angles, the road layout at Holbeck Interchange somewhat resembles the semicircular canals inside the human ear which detect orientation and balance. Was there was some kind of spatial resonance at work here? An alignment of shapes, gravities and psychogeophysical energy, causing a powerful reaction in my own inner ear as I passed by? Maybe the lost portal was trying to pull me back in time to the “Motorway City of the Seventies”. I’ll never know now for certain, but modern medicine doesn’t have all the answers so it’s important to keep an open mind.
If you’ve been affected by any spatial disorientation issues after visiting the exhibition and listening to Underground Lift, please let me know.
Insta: @ian_sta.gram
Email: thompsonian@pm.me