Sound work developed for the Lyd/Galerie (Sound/Gallery) in Denmark. The lab consisted out of a sophisticated system of 25 hidden speakers under the ground of Copenhagen’s central square, Radhusplatse. It allowed users to create a vast variety of soundscapes on the square. I had never done a sound piece before, so was mostly interested in collecting existing sounds and playing them back to people, as if they belonged there in the first place. The studio with advanced recording equipment was located underground, by the men’s public toilets. Three young guys ran it and since mostly men were involved with the gallery anyway, the traffic for the toilets didn’t really bother anyone. But as a woman, I thought it was funny to come down there and ‘work’.

We approached a variety of men in public, live and through advertisements, and asked them to come down to the studio to contribute their talents and record their classic male wolf whistles for us. The variety on the theme was actually greater than anyone would have thought. The collected whistles were roughly edited down to a single track and played on the square at random times during a two-week period in July 1997. So great was the sound system that I could have the whistles jump around from all over the square—nobody ever knew where they were coming from, but many turned around to look for their man.

Sound graph

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