Junction engine next door (also used in the piece) had been running when people entered the building.

Speaker Placement in Living Steam

The loudspeakers were divided into two basic groups of four. The first group was associated with particular engines, one real stereo pair behind the Waddon engine and two mono sources associated with the Dancer’s End engine and the Eastern Amos engine. These local speakers often carried the untreated sound of the engine they were associated with. Four additional speakers were hung high in the roof rafters. At various times the sound grew outward from the floor speakers to the roof to fill the hall with sound. At other times the speakers were used for antiphonal effects and various frequency – based spatialisations e.g. low drones at floor level and more active high pitched material in the roof. At one point a sound is built up by introducing individual frequency bands in different spatial locations. The mixed use of point sources and various stereo axes created a wide variety of spatial possibilities which were enhanced by the live engines and pipes, letting off little bursts of steam all around the room.

The Boundary of the Work: Anxious Objects

The use of representational space in Living Steam takes a different form from that in Boomtown. Rather than transforming a space by creating an aural illusion of a different space, the representational sounds of the piece are returned to their original context, the actual space in which they were recorded. A complex relationship is created between the work and the space that calls into question what is real and what is illusory.

I have long been interested in the effect that returning transformed sounds to their original setting would have on the perception of their source. In a project proposed in 1995 (Cuisine Concrete in collaboration with artist Tim Diggins) the transformed sounds of kitchen equipment were to be played through loudspeakers embedded in actual kitchen equipment in a fitted kitchen installation. The visual cues would provide a frame of reference for the transformed sounds allowing them to be perceived in relation to a known quantity and emphasising their nature as transformations of an original rather than just sounds in their own right.

This idea was taken forward into the Living Steam installation. Emmerson’s assertion is that the removal from original context enhances our imaginative involvement and our ability to create an illusion. This is certainly a powerful aspect of art, particularly of sonic art and is the way representational space was used in Boomtown. However, particularly in the visual art of the 20th century, for example in the found objects of Duchamp, the removal of objects from their original