Workplace Gallery is delighted to present our fourth solo exhibition at our gallery in Gateshead of new work by Marcus Coates. For this exhibition, Coates presents three new works that set out the scope of a wider enquiry. Central to this is the re-animation of our intersubjectivity with natural kinds.

The Sounds of Others, 2014 is an audiovisual installation, a comparative study of diverse animal vocalisation including humans. These sounds range from blue whale calls to insect stridulations. The voice of a species is slowed down or sped up which transforms its pitch and duration. Large custom built LED displays show the name of the animal and the changing speed of its sound. The blue whale starts at normal speed and then increases to 115x this speed until it sounds very similar to the next species played at normal speed –a spotted redshank (bird), which in turn speeds up to sound similar to a bush cricket, which slowed down sounds like a common tree frog and so on. The installation moves from one species to another finding points of resemblance between their songs and calls, drawing a relative line of connection between 24 species. For Coates, this represents a new taxonomy based on sound, where a gibbon is closely related to a canary and a shrew to a curlew. He suggests that revealing and occupying many more points of identification are possible and even advisable, as our physical capacity (sensory range), as well as our cultural means for knowing and relating to the non-human world, are limited.