KEY POINTS:
From disused swimming pools to old Spanish churches, Siren has been staged at some unusual locations. But none more so than Motat's Vehicle Gallery where the sound-art installation, performed by its creator Ray Lee and his partner Harry Dawes, will reside during next month's Auckland Festival.
"It takes on different characteristics depending on where it is," says Lee. "We've also done it in some neutral spaces like big theatres but I like doing it outside of conventional theatre spaces because there's a sense when you're in a theatre of everything being very safe. You're used to things happening in front of you when you sit in a theatre so when you go somewhere that is not a theatre you're not entirely sure how to respond. It changes the parameters of the experience."
With its old trams and vintage vehicles, Motat is an ideal venue for Siren, which Lee constructed out of remnants of old analogue technology. "There are pieces of second-hand windscreen wipers and little electronic circuits, which were originally hand-built," he says. "All the parts are easily accessible and the re-use of old materials to create something new is something I'm interested in."
The Oxfordshire-based artist has combined sound and visuals since studying music and drama at university. "Since then I've worked fairly constantly between those areas, trying to find ways to synthesise all of those elements, which I think is what Siren does," he says.
Lee first conceived Siren while working on a series of sound sculptures at Masson Mill, a disused Derbyshire textile plant. "I was creating machines that would make sounds that somehow evoked the history of the building, which was one of the first mills of the Industrial Revolution," he says. "One of the machines I made was this small tripod with a motor. I put an arm on top of the motor and then put an electronic circuit that made a noise on top of the arm and loud speakers at the end. As the arm started rotating, the sound changed radically. I realised that I needed two of them and I liked the sound so much I then made five and then eight and 16 and finally it became a piece in its own right."
The installation, first staged in 2004 at Hangar 3022 at Upper Heyford Airbase in Oxfordshire, creates a noise similar to an aircraft siren.
"The sound itself is very simple," says Lee. "I use this choir of voices, which is all-enveloping and you start to hear all these different things within this wall of sound. It tends to take over people's attention because it builds slowly and it's quite an intense experience.
"At one point, we change the lighting, turning off all the lights until you're left with just this rotating red light. It becomes much more of a pure experience."
It is also far from static. "The audience becomes a very important part of it," says Lee. "We configure the space so the audience can walk all the way around the installation although they're kept at a safe distance by a discreet safety barrier because they are quite dangerous, they're very fast. They're machines designed to do one thing, which is to spin and make sounds.
"The act of moving around is very important to how you see and hear it. You can move your head from one side to the other and it changes the sound. We're also aware of the audience on the other side of the installation and it becomes a kind of communal experience."
After recent seasons in Manchester, London and Utrecht, Lee is looking forward to taking Siren to New Zealand, which is "about as far away as we can get".
He believes that Siren's purely instrumental nature means it can translate into any language. "It's international," he says.
"You don't have to understand it or know what it is about to experience it.
"It is simply a series of machines that make sound through a combination of sounds and the way that they move takes people through an experience.
"You can experience it in a very straightforward level and kids, for example, respond very well. That means that it goes down well in lots of different countries and cultures."
Auckland Festival
What: Siren, by British artist, composer, performer Ray Lee
Where and when: Vehicle Gallery, Motat, March 14-20
