"London is full of hidden gems and secret spots that even locals and people who have lived in the city for years don’t know about. We’ll take you on a tour of little-known spaces, alternative architecture and cultural curiosities.
First, we head to East India (in the London Docklands) and explore the riverside area where old maritime history and contemporary art live together.
Trinity Buoy Wharf is a short walk from East India DLR and there you’ll find London’s only lighthouse. The wharf and its permanent exhibitions are free to visit, so that’s great for a start. The area is an arts quarter, and it’s a bit like a cross between an open museum and an artistic and small business community.
Visiting Trinity Wharf is definitely a multi-sensory experience and there is plenty of ambient and industrial sound even without the installations. However, if you want a more immersive trip, download the free sound walk audio tour. The sound walk lasts for an hour and has a slightly soporific voice that will make you wander around in something of a dream state, interspersed with interviews with resident artists, locals and heritage experts. A pretty decent way to be guided and no fiddly headset things to contend with.
The biggest permanent installation sits inside the lighthouse, which is open every weekend from April to September. Longplayer is in the lamp room so you can look over the city and river below while a strange, evolving composition by Jem Finer using Tibetan ‘singing bowls’ which has been designed to play with no combination being repeated until it ends after one thousand years. Wrap your mind (and ears) around that concept.
Back on the ground below, just to the side of the lighthouse, you’ll probably hear the call of the Faraday Effect before you see it. Faraday’s tiny workshop has been recreated by Fourth Wall Creations and entices you in with atmospheric sounds. Enter the tiny shed which documents the life and work of Michael Faraday, including an old desk, nautical paraphernalia and notes on the famous experiments he conducted in the Experimental Lighthouse. Look up to see a ceiling papered with sprawling maps, and adorned with colourful dangling glass baubles It’s a world of scientific discovery and sea exploration enclosed in a small space." London Cheapo
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