Hostile Melody
Site: Vanløse Station, Copenhagen, DK
Year: 2024
Status: Temporary public artwork
In 2023, DSB commissioned what the head of station services has described as “behaviour-regulating music”, the purpose of which, he stated, is “to scare away those who create insecurity” at selected stations nationwide. The commissioned composition is a thirty-second melody played at 114 beats per minute, a tempo the composer claims “lulls” the public into an “average walking pace” yet whose repetition “is designed to quickly become annoying”. Accordingly, by making visible what had been composed to regulate visibility, Hostile Melody re-distributed the sensible, albeit ephemerally, before advertisement posters inevitably reclaimed the column.
19,200 4/4 measures at 114 beats per minute (12 hours)
notated, printed & pasted to advertisement column, 2.1 x Ø1.15m
