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Introduction
An installation featuring slowed footage and audio of a heavy goods train passing through Newcastle Central Station, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The work is an investigation into the the way sound can modify social behaviour. When this specific train passes through Central Station, the impact of the sound is considerable. All of the people on the station platform stop all social interaction and united in silence, isolated by noise, their senses saturated by sound, wait for this event to pass. The duration is considerable masking all other sounds in the vicinity. Not many things have the ability to have such a strong effect on large groups of people in this way, such a collective overwhelm. In one way it is similar to the effect of thunder and lightening, the sounds, the rumbling are similar. However, we know there is no threat with the heavy goods train so people wait it out patiently, pause what ever it was they were doing, wait for it to pass and then move on with their lives. These transitions between everyday existence and overwhelmed listening, then waiting for the sound event to pass and an almost immediate reentry back into the social milieu, are revealed in detail by the slowed video presented in the work.

Audience Experience
The slowed footage and audio reveal the sublime in the quotidian – the screech of the trains wheels against the track are rendered as delicate crystals of ice, ringing out within the cavernous architecture of the station. Audiences members experiencing the work almost look as if they are part of the scene at the station – there is a mirroring of their behaviour, watching and listening.

Created in collaboration with Steven Legget.

Exhibited as a two channel video and two channel sound installation at Newcastle Keep for Late Shows.