'The Lines Beneath Your Feet...'
An interactive sound installation which seeks to explore how the public engage with protest. The sounds were all recorded in London on November 30th 2011, the day of the biggest national strike in a generation. The locations were pickets, marches and demonstrations around central London.
The sounds were activated by the participants as they stepped on pads marked with images of the street floor taken in the City of London.
These recordings were originally used in a soundscape piece for The New Statesman. After receiving comments describing the recordings gave of 'really being there', I became concerned with fetishising the protest as a object of consumption, something that listeners could live vicariously through. 'The lines beneath your feet…' was my attempt to get out of this bind. The interactive interface allows the participant to use their bodies imitate the act of walking along the street in protest, while at the same time having to work to rebuild the space of protest in the way they see most fit. Through this I hoped to create a listening environment that provoked a more active engagement with protest and space.