Bruce Nauman has built his latest ‘auditory sculpture’ in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Being only auditory, it is, in effect, invisible. The only spatial components being the series of slim, wall-mounted loudspeakers, distributed at regular intervals along each side of the cavernous hall, with a few extra at the East end and one dangling from the ceiling.

If one enters the hall from the West entrance, one is immediately greeted with a repeated "Thank you, thank you, thank you", spoken in a semi-sincere manner. Are these thanks for coming along just to hear them, or for managing to cope with all the other sounds one hears throughout the hall? The choice is entirely personal.

There are 21 separate sound pieces playing continually — whispers, shrieks, incantations; some meaningless mumbo-jumbo, some in Russian, and some merely clichés and platitudes. Surmounting all the chatter is Nauman's deep humming, which swoops and glides beneath it all in some deep and dark mystery. It could be ghostly and scary, but I left smiling broadly!

©  Straight Words, 2004