Further delight of the unexpected

A reader of my past blogs may recall one entitled Hidden delights of London:  Phantom railings (3 September 2012).  Imagine my delight today, therefore, when once again passing the wall outside the British Museum about which I wrote, I could hear my footsteps creating a strident echo, as though their speed and strength was being mimicked by sounds coming from the wall.  I paused, turned back and retraced my footsteps, only for my surprise to turn into a happy recognition of the re-appearance of the musical artwork called the Phantom Railings, about which I wrote.  This time, though, the creators of this installation seem to have added a little more to it.  I gather that the sounds made by my footsteps as I pass this installation are now being streamed live and can be heard on www.publicinterventions.org.  

I am writing this in the British Museum, and will now hurry back past the wall to delight once more in this installation, before returning home to what I hope will be a session listening to the live streaming as others make their way past the wall. The sounds my footsteps made are those which resemble the familiar sound of somebody running a stick along an iron fence.  This was in the days before the second world war demanded the removal of railings round houses and parks, so that they could be turned into armaments for the war effort.  Or at least that was what I was told when reading about the installation five years ago.  Now, though, a completely different interpretation has been put on the removal of the railings.  Far from being an attempt to help the war effort, they were, the notice on the wall states, “a democratic gesture to remove restrictions to public access to parks and gardens”, much advocated apparently by George Orwell himself.

I enjoyed my time walking up and down, creating my own symphony of sound.