The task we got during the class was to position bluetooth speaker somewhere in the space of LCC, play some sound and observe people’s reactions. We had to make sure that sound is not causing any distress.

Baria have chosen sound of the glass being broken on the loop. We have positioned the speaker firstly on the glass table in the main gallery of the first floor. The sound certainly drawn some attention and I noticed one person being diverted from their previous trajectory. After that we pot the speaker in the middle of the corridor just next to the art work which was made of glass. This also drawn attention and people at first couldn’t figure out where the sound is coming from. Some people told us later that they thought it might be the part of the art piece itself. This means that we could temporarily completely change the perception of the art piece and also drawn more attention to it than it would get under normal ‘no sound involved’ circumstances. I noticed some people even started dancing to the song of breaking glass.

Overall reaction was somewhere between amusement, curiosity to just getting a mild attention. This made me think about the context of this particular sound being present inside of the art school. The sound of glass could be normally considered distressing or dangerous situation happening near by. My assumption is that reaction and emotional response would be probably different if the sound was positioned in for example shopping centre or train station. Considering we were playing sound inside of the art school and next to the art piece made of glass reactions were mild. The third location we chose was a narrow glass window with no art work around but reactions were still mild. My theory is that people inside of the art school are somehow cognitively desensitised to normally to ‘weird’ or ‘uncommon’ events of sound which under other circumstances would trigger different and more acute response. It is predictable to expect that anything ‘weird’ occurring will be more likely some sort of art work rather than dangerous event happening. Of course the amplitude played the role as well. I believe that if we put the speaker louder the response could be also different.