SARAH MAYHEW keeps her ear to the ground for a sound installation at Oxford’s Radcliffe Observatory.

You’D be forgiven for thinking you are hearing things this autumn in one of the most striking buildings in Oxford.

Towering over the rubble and remains of the Radcliffe Infirmary site on the Woodstock Road is the Radcliffe Observatory, built by James Wyatt, and part of Oxford University’s Green Templeton College.

As you walk through the gates of the college the magnificent 18th-century Grade I listed building draws you near and up through its starkly elegant interior to the observatory at the top.

For 161 years the building was stargazing central, a functional observatory that played a pivotal role in the historical development of astronomy. Green Templeton College specialises in disciplines that are directly concerned with the contemporary world and human welfare, making the connection between cutting edge research and the public understanding of science and society.

Equally as cutting edge, Green Templeton College and Modern Art Oxford have commissioned the British-born, Berlin-based artist Susan Philipsz to make a new sound installation that, with remarkable potency, engages with the other-worldly, unique and intriguing nature of this historical site.

Philipsz took her inspiration for the piece in part from the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi who was a pioneer of radio technology that was later used in radio telescopes.

Marconi suggested that sounds, once generated, never die; they fade but continue to reverberate as sound waves across the universe. This concept is echoed in the work, You Are Not Alone, and gained from the very immediate feeling of standing in a space with 360-degree views of the surrounding area, while being slightly disconnected from it, as one gazes through the ancient dappled glass down onto the silenced hubbub of everyday life below.

Using radio transmission as the audio source for her work, You Are Not Alone is literally tuned into the universe, making the Observatory echo with the ting tang, bing bong of Philipsz’s jingle-esque recorded radio interval signals and the gawps and gasps of the on-lookers invited to walk the steep steps to enjoy this intangible spectacle until December 3.

The sounds have been sourced from around the world and re-recorded on the resonating, aluminium chimes of vibraphones (similar to xylophones and used in jazz); they are those of catchy, loved, hated, unforgettable radio jingles. Jingles were originally developed in the 1920s as musical signatures to identify particular radio stations; however, with the advent of digital technology and digital radio, their use has now declined though not completely vanished.

The source of the tingly musical sensations are four recordings broadcast on a loop from separate FM transmitters on the rooftop of Modern Art Oxford on Pembroke Street to receivers, across town, on the Observatory.

The receivers pick up the transmissions and relay them to visitors through four speakers on the inside of the Observatory building, in doing so sculpting time and space through the journey of sound across the city of Oxford.

Stood in the Observatory, searching in space, visitors experience sound given a distant, ethereal and haunting quality by the vibraphone.

Interestingly, the Radcliffe Observatory was modelled on the Tower of the Winds, a 1st century BC marble clock tower in Athens.

The Tower of the Winds, also called horologion (timepiece), stood high, reaching up to the Gods.

Despite the physically elevated position of You Are Not Alone, the soundscape is slightly mystifying, and on a blustery November afternoon, there was a distinct sense of vulnerability and exposure to life’s elements that I felt very much attuned with.

An installation well worth both the climb, and the time.

You Are Not Alone is at The Radcliffe Observatory, Green Templeton College, Woodstock Road, Oxford. Exhibition continues until December 3. It is open Tuesday-Sunday, 2–5pm.