A woman runs past me, so close I can feel the air move on my neck in her wake. I turn around to watch her progress but there’s no one there. She’s disappeared into thin air.

Binaural technology can do funny things to your brain. The above experience happened to me in a show called Electric Hotel, a dance performance staged outdoors with the audience listening to its soundscape on binaural headphones. The woman was a recording played into my ears. The visceral feeling of her being there was real.

It’s this power that composers Max and Ben Ringham want to utilise in their new app Wiretapper. Created with long-time collaborator, and one of the artists behind Electric Hotel, David Rosenberg, it is a public audio project: a unique sound-based performance event hidden in public spaces in the centre of the city.

So what will audiences actually hear? “I think the show has more than its fair share of the sounds of London. If that is what you are after you will not be disappointed,” Max says. But sounds that we recognise are only a starting point towards an experience and “feeling that they have scratched the surface of something and glimpsed the dark underbelly of the city….”

Honour Bayes talked to Max about the history of binaural sound, the twisted mind of David Rosenberg and what it’s like to work with your brother.

Honour Bayes: How did you start out? As brothers I like the idea of it being with toy drum sets and clarinets from music lessons, but maybe that's a bit romantic?

Max Ringham: Well that's not so far from the truth, although it was probably more like tape machines and synthesisers. From a young age we were both fascinated with the technology and what we could do with it. Thankfully our parents were very supportive of us and by the time we were in out late teens we had a small studio in the house, upsetting the neighbours by writing jungle tunes a bit too loud late in to the night. Our first break was getting signed to a small dance label while in our spare time we wrote music for TV to make ends meet.

Honour: What's your starting point when you compose now? 

Max: It varies a lot depending on the project but I think the texture and sound of what we are creating is probably a usual starting point for us. We'll collect samples and patches on synthesisers and create a pallet. References are very important and we tend to spend a lot of time listening to music before we start writing. 

Honour: You began in the music industry - what was it about working with Shunt initially that peaked and then encouraged your interest in performative sound work?

Max: There was a strong personal connection with a few people in the company anyway, but it was an easy fit. Shunt is all about creating environments and experiences and from a musical point of view that is something we have always been interested in. Not just how a piece of music moves you but the atmosphere that it creates and how it can inform an experience.

Honour: Where did the idea for Wiretapper come from?

Max: We've been working with binaural technology for some time now, particularly with David (Rosenberg). as with any marriage of technology and art there are limitations and so much art comes from a response to those dilemmas. The idea for Wiretapper came from a response from one of those 'wouldn't it be great if....?' questions.

Honour: David Rosenberg said “…with this project we are using headphones to create a communal experience in a public space, partly as an antidote to the individualistic soundtracks that we increasingly use to score our own headphone-wearing lives.” This reads to me as being a social statement but also a political one. Do you see this project as being political in someway?

Max: Absolutely, but I think these questions of what is public and what is private, and what is communal and what is personal seem to be especially pertinent at the moment. It seems to be what everyone is talking about...

Honour: What’s it like working with your brother?

Max: It helps that we are both scathing of each others work and when we play ideas we tend to know already what the other is going to say, which makes you want to push it. It doesn’t stop comments like ‘It’s not screaming. This is something I like…’

Honour: You’ve worked with David Rosenberg before on Fiction and Music From The Motor Show – what do you each bring to the other?

Max: We’ve worked with David and Andrew for so long now it’s like they’re both family. I think Ben and I are quite practical and always thinking about how something will be done but David will come with the most extreme ideas that sometimes seem either impossible or just plain unpleasant for an audience. I remember once working on a show with him where we had a continual drone from a machine. David insisted from the beginning that the noise should be so loud as to drown out all dialogue and be almost painful for an audience, and that it should continue like this for the entire show. As the show developed, compromises were made and the final point we reached was fantastic, but it was only from starting out from such extreme position that we reached the end result. It takes a twisted mind like David's to see that.

Honour: The technical advances in sound are extraordinary and incredible things are now being done. Where can you see it going in the future and what would you like to see?

Max: Well the interesting thing about binaural technology is that it has been around for nearly 100 years already. However as well as being used a lot recently by theatre and performance practitioners, it is also increasingly being used in gaming and other forms of media as more as more people sit in front of computers with headphones on. I can imagine we will see more and more crossover of these so-called immersive techniques into other forms.

wiretapper.co.uk

Tue 24 May - Sat 4 June 2016

at a Secret Location, Central London