The room is white and empty. There is no painting on the wall, no sculpture on the floor, no screen. There is a bench, and a small card that says: "Please sit. The work lasts ten minutes."
I sit. For the first minute, nothing happens. For the second minute, I start to hear things: the air-conditioning, my own breathing, a distant door. By the fifth minute, I realise that the room is not silent at all. It is full of sound, and every sound has been placed there deliberately.
Art you cannot see
Sound art has existed for more than a century, but it has always been a hard sell. Galleries are built for looking. Visitors walk past a room with nothing on the walls, glance in and move on. The artists who work in sound have spent decades trying to persuade people to stop and listen.
Something has changed. In the past five years, major museums have staged large sound art exhibitions, and some have drawn bigger crowds than their painting shows.
