"It’s the culmination of my architectural training and desires."

Sound artist and musician Janek Schaefer, the creator of the award-winning HCMF 2007 installation Extended Play, will once again be bringing his work to West Yorkshire. Schaefer has designed Bradford SoundPool , an audio installation played through underground and elevated speakers set around the edge of an 80-metre wide mirror pool, the focal point of a new public space planned for the centre of Bradford.

“It’s a real culmination of my architectural training and desires, and it’s permanent, which is amazing,” he says of the park feature, which is scheduled to open in 2012. During the day, the speakers will play an audio collage of water birds from across the globe, whilst a soft drone will surround the pool as it drains each dusk and refills the following dawn. At other times, the installation will broadcast sounds collected by local residents as part of a project run by Schaefer; recordings of the seashore from Bradford’s Irish twin town Galway; and the Bradford Blowhole, a brass band piece timed to accompany spurting fountains.

Having studied architecture at the Royal College of Art, Schaefer’s work often hinges around the power of distorted and dissociated sounds to evoke memories of people and places. His first piece, 1995’s Recorded Delivery, involved the noises captured en route by a voice-activated dictaphone hidden inside a parcel posted to the exhibition venue. Other works include Vacant Space, an installation of sound and images from empty buildings, and Cold Storage, a site-specific composition for a brick warehouse cellar in Rome.

Commissioned for HCMF 2007, Extended Play is a poignant, but ultimately uplifting tribute to child survivors of conflict. It was inspired by Schaefer’s reflections upon the contrast between the circumstances surrounding the birth of his daughter in Surrey in 2005, and that of his mother, born in war-torn Warsaw in 1942.

Schaefer took a phrase from a Polish tango song that formed part of Jodoform, a system of coded messages transmitted to underground resistance fighters by the BBC World Service. This particular song was broadcast on the day his mother was born. Working with arranger Michael Jennings, he adapted it into a piece for violin, cello and piano. Each part was recorded separately and pressed onto a onto a 12” vinyl EP.

For the installation, nine identical record players in Huddersfield Art Gallery simultaneously played copies of the three recordings at 33, 45 and 78 rpm, creating a bittersweet blend of harmony and dissonance that echoed the uncertainties faced by children born into conflict. Additionally, motion sensors attached to each turntable caused the music to halt briefly when visitors passed, underlining the impact of each individual upon the lives of others.

Extended Play went on to win Schaefer both the 2008 British Composer of the Year Award for Sonic Art and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for composition. “It gave me a wonderful standing in the community,” he jokes, “I can walk into any shop or meet any tradesman, and they’ll know what British Composer of the Year means.”

As with many of his works, Schaefer also created a CD version of Extended Play, based upon recordings of the vinyl being played. “I wanted to make it quite visceral, so I didn’t want to just play back the recordings of the instruments,” he explains. “You can hear the record players clunking, clicking and scratching, and when their power is cut you can hear the record slowing down. I think character comes when you add and add, or take away and take away, rather than having a pure copy.”

After a two-year absence, the installation itself returns this autumn, when it will be hosted by the November Music festival in the Netherlands, before forming part of a career retrospective for Schaefer at Liverpool’s Bluecoat gallery in December.

Janek Schaefer website

Bradford city park plans

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