Marconi House in Central London hosted the BBC’s first regular radio broadcasts in the 1920s, and so is one focal point of the organisation’s 100th anniversary. A few doors along, you find Bush House, the home of the BBC’s World Service broadcasting network for 70 years until it moved in 2012.
The VoiceLine is a unique installation that currently links these two buildings, comprised of 39 L-Acoustics 5XT coaxial speakers snaking 170m along a freshly pedestrianised section of The Strand, providing an astonishing evocation of broadcasting, urbanisation and human interaction.
The VoiceLine is a creation of award-winning artist Nick Ryan. “Because Nick had such a clear design concept, we provided him with a pair of the speakers we knew would suit it best, which was the 5XT, to work on in his studio,” says Stephen Hughes, account director at Delta Live.
The speakers sit at an angle on top of steel pillars and have a metal coil around them, lit at night, which gives them the evocative look of a vintage microphone. “They have 5” drivers,” continues Hughes, “so they give you a good bit of low end, bearing in mind there are no subs as part of the sound reinforcement. The SPL is quite high, so it gives you that full range at close proximity which is really effective as you walk past each box. We felt it would meet Nick’s design priorities, and he readily agreed.”
Behind the scenes, a Mac Mini running QLab plays out a 12-hour pathway of audio with 40 variable segments fed into eight L-Acoustics LA4X four-channel amplified controllers via an AVB network. A secondary pathway, via MADI to the analogue inputs of the amplifiers, provides redundancy which then outputs to 1.5km of speaker cable.
The audio programme weaves together time-alaigned and time-adjustable music, samples including whale song recorded by acoustic ecologist Michelle Fournet and, pertinently for this location, voices recorded during 100 years of BBC radio. For this, Ryan turned to L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Studio 3D audio software suite and its spatial reverbs and panning facilities, tethering the line of loudspeakers into groups of eight.
“L-Acoustics were very helpful as I was planning the installation, especially Paul Keating of L-Acoustics Creations,” Ryan says. “They’re very interested in how L-ISA Studio can author immersive content, and I find them very thoughtful people who want to support anything that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible. By no means have I used L-ISA for everything, but for the more creative areas of the content it’s been invaluable.”
The VoiceLine is scheduled to run until March 2023.
