Could you talk a bit more about the layers of sound?
Do the layers of sound have a role?
The ambient aspect of it is the spatial aspect of it actually,
of the fact that we're thinking of music sculpturally.
So each layer is distributed around a space—ie this room—
and so when you're standing at any one part
of the room it sounds different.
Also there's one layer which pans across the room
so it's creating, it's like sitting in a jungle
and you hear all these things around you.
So, that would be the ambient aspect of it.
The generative aspect is the way in which the layers interact,
which is in a completely random and unpredictable way.
All of the CD players are set to random.
So there's no way of determining which layer
is going to go over which layer.
So, it's constantly generating a piece that
we have got very little control over.
The layers themselves are all produced independently
of each other through a number of different methods.
Some of them are quite traditional, using instruments.
Some of them are produced just creating sounds.
There's one sound which is on one of the CDs
where I know Brian produced it by getting a bit of plastic,
getting a microphone and just waggling the plastic like that,
and it was the action of the air.
So there are abstract sounds like that.
There's also digitally created sounds in some of the layers.
So one layer, when we were setting up this show,
Brian just sat over there with his laptop and created
one of the layers that you're listening [to]
just using software.
So, like the images, the sound becomes quite textural
because it comes from all different sources.
Obviously it takes a long time to decide which layers
are working with which layers.
So occasionally we put a layer in there and it obviously
was sounding awful so that would come out.
And it's the same with the images.
It took us about a year and a half to get comfortable
with the choice of layers and that's exactly
true of the music as well.
.