Canary Wharf Screen: Marcus Coates

Watching a Marcus Coates film is very rewarding. With real wit, the artist makes use of small moments when the urban world (unconsciously) mimics nature through sound. In this clip of Follow the Voice the beep of a pedestrian crossing, its regular, incessant bursts with ambient traffic noise, is quietly replaced by birdsong and jungle-like sounds – the real prize for the viewer being that the call is a total match; tone, consistency, pitch. The film continues with more of this satisfying sublimity and delightfully coined “sonic kinship” with an even greater parallel between the random bleep of a supermarket scanner and a monkey…