full version installed in the Scout Hut next door to Abbey Taxi

(also a taxi-specific composition playing in Abbey Taxi itself)

Audience : Hearing is an installation of minimal, human sound. A quiet, delicate and intimate work. At its core is the question of what is present when one is silent, and to what extent an individual’s qualities are revealed in their silence. The work explores the quality of the silent presence, offering the audience a sense of time spent in silence with others and a chance to focus on the intimate details of being which are often masked by speech and action.

This work is drawn from a previous work by Rachel Gomme 'Audience' which was first performed at the Closing Event for Taxi Gallery in Nov 2005 and was also presented at Colchester Arts Centre, South London Gallery, and the Phoenix, Exeter.

In 'Audience', viewers (contributors) were invited to make an appointment for a 10-minute ‘interview’, during which they sat in silence with Rachel. The silence is recorded onto minidisk, and transferred onto CD. All contributors receive a copy of the CD containing their silence, and the CD series is also available for sale.

Rachel says of this work: "While my aim was essentially to explore intimacy and highlight the charged presence of silence between two people in the live performance, my experience of presenting the piece highlights other aspects of the work which I want to explore. In particular, I have been fascinated by the recordings themselves. In addition to ambient noise, the human sounds they include (breathing, coughing, drinking water etc.) create a strong presence through sound. As artist, I have been privileged to receive the silent presence of all contributors, giving me a strong sense of a collectivity of presences. The contributors, however, necessarily only experience one individual interaction. These two factors spurred me to consider the ways of presenting the sound to highlight the collective nature of the recordings."

The sound playing through the speakers was not immediately apparent, the recorded ambient sounds merging with the ‘live’ sound within and outside the Scout Hut. Gradually there emerged a layering of ambient sounds (traffic, sirens, church bells, rain) with indications of a much more immediate human presence – a breath taken in, the sound of someone swallowing, shifting in a chair. These small, intimate traces were heard sometimes individually, sometimes layered over one another, contrasting and merging. Just as, during the original interviews, the sense of a charged interaction between two silent individuals grew as the focus on outside sounds fell away, in 'Audience : Hearing' the silent presence emerged as the centre of the work. There was a sense of an invisible gathering of people in the space, a presence both eerie and intimate. The simple installation, inevitably inflected by the atmospherics of a Scout Hut included two television screens on which very occasionally and briefly appeared minimal textual extracts from the comments book for the 'Audience' performances.

from Jim Jepps - http://jimjay.blogspot.com/2007/04/raucous-silence.html

from Rachel Gomme >

it all seems such a bubble now - the sunshine,
the birdsong adding to the sound in the hut...
I think I was so pleased and relieved(!) that it all worked, the way I had
envisaged it. I am really pleased with what John did with the sound - it was
quite a difficult process for me, being so hands-off while he worked on it,
and having it come together was almost like magic. At the same time it feels
quite strange, like I don't quite know what I have had to do with this piece
(at the same time as knowing that in some ways it is entirely mine).
I was so pleased as well that people came and stayed for some time - it's so
easy to walk into an installation and feel like you've got it in 5 minutes
(or is that just my short attention span?). It is lovely to feel that
somehow together we have created a space where people want to stay, spend
some time... I'm interested that in some ways the responses are quite
different - it evokes different things for different people. I especially
like Lawrence's comment about the layering of the sound, because that was
something that worked really well for me - especially being just a little
bit farther away from the road, so the 'real' traffic noise was just like a
gentle echo...

selections from the comments book >

The sounds of yawning made me laugh out loud. I loved the way the recorded sounds layered over and blended in with the actual sounds happening around and inside the Scout Hut. The presence of recorded silences made the actual silence appear recorded/frozen/captured as well. Laurence Bradby

Very different 'creating' a silence to 'listening' to many silences. by turns lulling and stimulating. Also very exciting to add the layer of the sound of the silence of my listening (with stomach rumblings). I liked the sense of ebb and flow in the editing/sound composition. Elspeth Owen

I really enjoyed this, it was extremely peaceful and I felt myself stop rushing, just relax and start to go nto a dream state. It was intimate - I felt connected to the people I knew were being 'interviewed'. And this location was amazing. Such an evocative room and evocative sounds. Very effective. Sara H

Really interesting and very different being a consumer of the final product to being a participant - less stressful for a start! But there are curious parallels too. Although the one-to-one presence/personal space is absent the interaction with other listeners (strangers) in the installation also has a dynamic to it. far from silence this can be a very heightened and frenetic experience. Jim Jepps

At first I thought it was the sound of a river or running water like a brook ... then sounds came that almost annoyed me by disturbing the peace within this room. However as I sat and listened, I could hear cars, people, all noises in the distance and every so often a sigh. Life races us by, like the sounds around us, and if only we live a little ... we'll never have time to sigh!! Lovely piece of work. Well done.
Hazel