Music / News
The sound of a toilet flushing
A sound piece based on the noise of a toilet flushing played at Sanctum, the 24-day continuous art project at Temple Church, was inspired by this review and the subsequent comments on Bristol24/7.
Soon after 3am on the second day of Sanctum, our reviewer Louis Emanuel was the only person in the audience to hear what he described as “an MP3 mix of noises which range from birdsong to toilets flushing. It’s just me here at this point. And this is not what I need.”
It turns out that this was a sound piece from artist Laura Denning, who took the time to reply to Louis in the comments underneath his review: “Thanks! NOT. That a sonic piece I created called Underheard and no toilets flush anywhere within the piece. It’s all natural water sounds. You seriously need to get out (of the city) more.”
This acted as the inspiration needed for Tom Stickland, who performed his new piece, Ambient Toilet Flush:
Tom said: “The inspiration was the artist’s indignation at the description of ‘an hour of bird song and flushing toilets’. I found that very amusing particularly their statement that ‘no toilets flush anywhere within the piece’.
“A day earlier I had offered to fill an early hours slot at Sanctum with an ambient music mix. I thought it would be amusing to create a piece based on the sound of toilet being flushed and use that in the performance.”
Tom recorded the sound of the last drops of a wee and a flushing toilet at the City Academy using his mobile phone. Back at his house, he imported the sound track into some editing software, took the basic sounds and added progressively more effects such as pitch stretches, speed changes and multiple echoes.
“The process was very much trial and error as I tried things until I found interesting sounds and then copied and manipulated them,” Tom said. “Towards the end I deleted well over half of what I’d created in order to make the track less cluttered.
“I found the creative process very enjoyable and I’m pleased with the final result. I believe that it stands up on its own artistic merit.”
Tom played the track at about 4am on Tuesday morning at Sanctum. He said: “A friend of mine was there in the audience and said that the facial expressions were amusing as some people realised what they were listening to.”
Sanctum at Temple Church ends on Saturday, November 21. For more information, visit www.sanctumbristol.com
Read more: My (almost) 24 hours at Sanctum
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