‘Phantom Walls’ was the title of a piece of work I made for the gallery space run as part of my old studio building on Lower Stokes Croft.
The finished installation consisted of Sculptural element, sound playback and low frequency presence.
The darkened room provided an ideal setting and a false wall behind which to install the CD and cross-over electronics as well as the sub bass cabinet and tone machine.
Named ‘Phantom Walls’ after a book by Oliver Lodge, one credited inventor of the moving coil speaker, the looping voice is a recording from 1966 of a medium channeling Oliver Lodge.
The 3 cell horn mounted on the industrial tripod forming the main sculptural part is aimed at a candle at an angle which produces the illusion that the candle is talking. The above recording is in fact playing back through the driver and horn.
The bass sine wave produced a tone around 35hz which was selected as it was found to be the basic resonant frequency of the space. Low frequency hums and tones have been associated with reportings of the paranormal and ghosts, etc.
Several cancellation spots resulted from this set-up. The most auspicious being between the candle and speaker. If you walked around the space the bass fills the room and the voice recording appears to be coming from the candle.
When you find yourself standing between the speaker and candle and thus learn that the source is in fact the speaker as you are now proximate enough to hear it directly something else also happens.
The bass tone is cancelled out and becomes significantly quieter. As if a moment of lucidity also produced calm and peace.
