The medical sounds were not meant to be background but to share the space with the voices which emerge from it. I hope I am doing something quite different from the way sound is normally used in documentary, both in its prominence in relation to voice but also in the way the sound materials become abstracted sometimes, hopefully leading listeners to hear the environmental sounds a bit differently when the abstraction gives way again to ‘natural’ sounds. I also made other work from this project, including 2 installations and a video with photographer Tim Wainwright. One of these installations used no voice at all, only sounds from the operating theatre:
http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Flow.htm
This was shown in the Old Operating Theatre Museum in London.
The video piece ITU also contained no voice but only sounds recorded in the Intensive Treatment Unit of the transplant hospital:
http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Flow.htm
I have recently written an article about sound in the ITU for a publication about immersive soundscapes soon to come from the University of Regina in Canada.
We also made a 24-channel installation with photographs and sound in which the medical sounds were given more time and space than is possible within the scope of a radio slot:
http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Transplant_installation.htm?code=42
And finally, we’ve published a book and DVD from the project, with essays by a patient, an anthropologist, a medical researcher, a sound art critic, an art critic, a performance artist, a psychiatrist and a patient as well as an interview with Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, who has performed more heart transplants than any other doctor.
http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Transplant_book.htm

Let me know if anyone reads this!

John Wynne