For his fifth Unilever commission, the American artist has deployed a wide range of spoken texts in a way that orchestrates and measures the space of the Hall. Contracted to provide the audio, Sound Directions was tasked with taking 21 diverse audio tracks and samples from previous works, and playing out via a series of 28 directional electrostatic speaker elements, running 100V line, and distributed the length of the Turbine Hall.
Marquee Audio, meanwhile, has supplied all the additional hardware and designed an elaborate cabling infrastructure in which the complex routing protocols have been carefully created in BSS Soundweb architecture.
Marquee Audio's Andy Huffer first became involved after the company alerted Sound Directions to the Panphonics speaker from Finland. "These are raw, dipoles source, which we were able to demonstrate to Nauman," said Sound Directions' project manager Fergus Rougier. The company built special sound baffles and enclosures, which recess into the giant industrial girders of the Turbine Hall. Designed in such a way as to 'draw' visitors down the hall, the construction takes into account that at eye level visitors would be able to interact with the sound source.
To this Sound Directions has added four high power SoundTube suspended dome speakers and supplied a custom 24 track, looping, solid-state playback device, with the audio information and samples stored on a series of CF cards, offering 16-bit/44.1kHz audio processing.
Bruce Nauman first arrived on site in July for a system demo. "He was interested in using the structure of the building, and wanted a blurring of sounds - so that if you were standing in the middle of two sound sources you could receive both loud and clear," recalls Rougier. "And so we had to define the space between the speakers to a low hum. Although there was also a demonstration of microwave technology he wasn't transfixed by the tight beam it produced, and he couldn't achieve the bandwidth or the volume."
The evolved solution is thus a combination of directional and wide beam sound masking technologies. However, Rougier is the first to admit that the success of the installation is due in no small part to Soundweb - and Huffer agrees, "With 21 different sounds but 35 separate outputs to route, we considered some sort of matrix - possibly an analogue patchbay." His solution was modern DSP processing, building five 9088iiLL Webs and a 9000ii network hub into a 40 x 40 matrix.
"We had to create a system that would enable us to route any of the content anywhere. As time was against us, we needed to programme up a visualization of the room, with each speaker point represented by a source selector. This offered us great flexibility and made it easy to navigate, set up, and change level controls, with EQ and a minimum of compression."
Marquee Audio also had to design cable runs on a macro scale, with Rob Whitaker project managing the whole installation. "In the end we went for a multipin type arrangement, with break-out boxes hidden behind the girders," says Huffer. "The biggest problem was just the sheer scale of the building, and having to gain access when the Gallery was out of hours, so we needed a cabling solution based on speedy installation."
Two drive racks, housing the Soundwebs, CF cards and Cloud Electronics transformers and amplification, are contained within a special structure, situated within the Turbine Hall. Summing up, Rougier says that Bruce Nauman was delighted with the way in which his concept was realized. Paying tribute, he says, "Bruce was also a delight to work with. He knew exactly what he wanted and is a mathematician who also understands electronics, which was really useful for a proj
