WhitePlane_2

by Alex Bradley and Charles Poulet

Tranway - Glasgow - 2006

First seen at Baltic gallery in Newcastle, Whiteplane_2 came to Glasgow Tramway in 2006. Whiteplane_2 was a unsettling, beautiful sound installation incorporating a live performance by Alex Bradley and Charles Poulet using ambisonic techniques – immersive sound – with a series of patches that was developed by the Arup New York SoundLab team Raj Patel and Alban Bassuet. Being in charge of the Arup Acoustics team in Scotland and creating the Arup DDS at the time, I welcomed Alex and Charles in Glasgow and helped them install and calibrate the ambisonic set-up to launch Whiteplane_2 in the Glasgow Tramway.

The installation inhabited the very fabric of the building, inviting the audience to rethink their ideas of perspective, light and depth. Bradley and Poulet wrote a score which fully integrated with the Tramway space, and which was augmented by live improvisation, creating what the artists called a “rhythm of position”. The audience was free to wander around Whiteplane2, a space that moves from the familiar to the unfamiliar through sonic illusion, provoking a feeling of subtle dislocation.