‘Weaving, Yearning’ is a public sound installation designed by artists Hans Rosenström and Kalle Nio that unfolds through the busy area of King’s Cross, Central London. A song, consisting of four voices, softly drifts through the cityscape creating an invisible thread that weaves the listener, the passer-by and the environment together for a fleeting moment in time.
The past year has thrown into stark relief the ways in which our lives are interdependent and how singular events ripple through communities and across continents. The song, composed by Aino Venna, reminds us of our shared existence and our interwoven lives that together form a delicate and temporary community.
Following a successful audio installation at Coal Drop Yard, RG Jones was commissioned to design and install a temporary system in Kings Cross for Weaving, Yearning, which relies solely on the sound of the four voices to draw people through the piece, making its way from St Pancras Square to Granary Square…
RG Jones Sales Director Jon Berry explains “this project presented us with really interesting challenges; to provide a technical solution that can reflect the emotional effect sound has as it weaves from one loudspeaker to the next. We installed 8 compact, weatherproof JBL CBT50 column speakers onto a collection of trees and lampposts that followed the route, and 4 high powered JBL CBT1000 column speakers mounted lighting structures and temporary scaffolding in the wider spaces. Each speaker is individually cabled back to a dedicated amplifier channel”.
“In a project like this you only have a vision of what you aim to achieve,” says artists Hans Rosenström and Kalle Nio, “and to go forward you really have to trust that vision. Robert and Jon from RG Jones responded to our plans with care, their attention to details and professionalism made it possible to transform our vision into reality. The quality of the sound and its presence along the route is clear and as precise as we ever could have hoped for.” Hans Rosenström & Kalle Nio
RG Jones Project Manager Rob Powell explains how “we were able to place multiple rack locations along the route that drives different parts of the installation with 11 discrete media file players programmed to start at synchronised times. I wanted to ensure the whole soundscape balanced and eq’d to meet the artists vision”.
‘Weaving, Yearning’ offers the listener an opportunity to breathe in the atmosphere and its nuances, and is timed to be working around sunset each day, when the city and the environment are in a state of flux.
According to a research paper by NCBI Music listening is one of the most enigmatic of human behaviours.“We all hear the music we like as something special, as something that defies the mundane, takes us “out of ourselves,” puts us somewhere else.” (Frith)
Music can evoke emotion and stimulate new neural connections. Research suggest that listening to music has an impact on the human stress response, particularly the autonomic nervous system. Music is powerful. It affects our brains, our bodies and our social connections. There is no doubt that many people have relied on music to get through the pandemic.
Weaving Yearning will be available to experience every evening at 9pm until 22nd June 2021. From St Pancras Square to Granary Square and is the second chapter of contemporary art entity A I S T I T / coming to Our Senses, which takes place in six European cities. It is commissioned by Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland, Finnish Institute Benelux, Institut Finlandais and Finnland Institute in Deutchland.
In a project like this you only have a vision of what you aim to achieve and to go forward you really have to trust that vision. Robert and Jon from RG Jones responded to our plans with care, their attention to details and professionalism made it possible to transform our vision into reality. The quality of the sound and its presence along the route is clear and as precise as we ever could have hoped for.