Tunnel 02 is a multi-channel sound installation reconstructing the voyage of driving through a tunnel at high speed. The audience is to be seated in two rows of chairs as the passengers of an imaginary vehicle. The soundscape of a tunnel is normally traveled while inside a vehicle yet no physical driving takes place in this installation. Instead sounds are isolated from their original environment focusing on the sonic effects of the voyage. Rather than representing a soundscape the installation becomes a sensorial experience transforming the movement of driving for a stationary audience.
The particular environment of the tunnel involves not only a constant drone but a repetitious pattern putting the listener into a trance. The sonic experience becomes ominous and reflects a world where man-made structures drown our senses momentarily. A monotonous tone emerges from the rigid landscape of the tunnel while at the same time a rich cacophony of low frequencies, mechanical noises and resonance is brought to attention. The separate audio channels allow for certain sounds to be emitted from specific points around the audience for a more accurate spacial recreation.
For the tunnel to be experienced, one has to be outside of it in the first place. Even though the tunnel is the primary subject, the vehicle remains an important element in the construction of the sound voyage. This vehicle acts as a new interior that delimits and controls the way sounds are perceived by filtering all that is heard while driving. The audience sonically enters the tunnel by first getting in the vehicle and proceeding on a highway. Yet the automobile is imaginary and the passengers are trapped inside a tunnel of deafening sounds; guiding them through the enclosed sonic environment, sound takes the driver's seat.
