ART / Business with pleasure: A London office-block is the setting for Hans Peter Kuhn's multi-storey sound and light show. Ellen Cranitch reports

The expensive new office-block known as Angel Square which wraps itself around the junction of north London's Islington High Street and City Road has been perplexing passers-by throughout the period of its construction. At first, this was due to a large proclamation which appeared on hoardings surrounding the site. Crawling through traffic at the Angel, motorists could read No man ought to be molested on account of his opinions. It was as though advertising had undergone a sudden and powerful change of heart and was now making a public apology to its former victims. When this was followed by two further statements - Political liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another and Men are born and always continue free and equal - it seemed enlightenment had proved too much for the industry; advertisers had gone spinning away in Utopian reverie. Onlookers well-versed in civil liberties literature would, of course, have recognised the words of Thomas Paine. It transpires that Paine may have written some of The Rights of Man on the site, and, 1992 being the bicentenary of that book, the architect gamely decided to feature a monument to Paine within his design, and references to his work on the hoardings.

Next, inching out above the hoardings, there appeared what seemed to be some sort of tower. Evidently the new building was going to make some architectural gesture at the turn-of-the-century edifice opposite, a former Lyons coffee house, which sports a dome supported by angels. Now, occupational therapy for snarled-up motorists shifted to contemplating what kind of Post-Modern witticism was shortly to be revealed. When the hoardings finally came down, the 'tower' turned out to be an elaborate Italianate campanile with a clock face on one side; it crowns a building formed of a wide variety of architectural styles. No Post-Modern smirk this, rather an imagination run riot.

It comes as no surprise to learn that this provocative site is now due to mount its third offensive on the innocent commuter. This evening (and every evening until 25 October), the Berlin-based composer Hans Peter Kuhn is creating a sound and light installation on each of Angel Square's five as-yet-unused floors, and inviting passers-by in. Forty-year-old Kuhn, who has worked predominantly with the American theatre director Robert Wilson and at the Schaubuhne theatre in Berlin, is fascinated by sound and the act of listening.

Talking to Kuhn, it's evident that almost 20 years of working intensively with sound have taken their toll. He notices the sound that your pen makes as it scratches the paper, yet fails to see a juggernaut rounding the corner of Islington High Street and has to be hauled back on to the kerb to escape certain death.

Kuhn's aim with Angel Square is to create a different world on each floor. 'There are five acts to the drama, five scenes to enter,' he says. On two evenings there are also five dances - one for each floor - choreographed by Ian Spink, artistic director of Second Stride.

Floor One, called Elementary, aims to disorientate the audience by conjuring up an artificial storm. Sound will be unleashed in sudden, crashing bursts and flashes of light will illuminate vast areas of darkness. The audience will be confined to a tiny space to make the surrounding blackness all the more awesome. 'I don't think people will spend very long in here,' comments Kuhn. Instead, he thinks the place they'll linger will be Floor Three, entitled Jungle, which is a far more cluttered affair. Here, dense coils of coloured cables snake across the floor, the office's neon lights have been masked with tape leaving just a slim shard of light shining. The room is filled with the daily noises of urban life: a phone ringing, a television chattering, the murmur of traffic . . .

Kuhn's speciality is familiar sounds. In past works he's used coos and chirps and caws from nature, raucous cacophonies of sirens and screams, and worked mysterious alchemical transformations on existing music, from brass bands to the classics. The hallmark of his style is the distinctive way he isolates or incongruously juxtaposes these sounds.

The inspiration for each floor, Kuhn explains, derives from the internal, structural characteristics of the space. Floor Four, Inside, is carpeted, and the carpet sets the theme: 'I wanted this space to be soothing, meditative,' he says, 'in contrast to the business of the others.' So what does the sound consist of? 'It's a recording of an industrial steel plant - very calming, very nice.'

Although Kuhn stresses that the experience should be random - you don't have to move between the floors sequentially - Floor Five could nevertheless still be said to represent the summit of this bizarre enterprise. Here Kuhn has created his Silent Museum of Sound. On each of the room's 52 window-sills will be positioned an object that once made a sound but currently is not doing so; for example, a child's rattle, a dead fly or a disconnected telephone. Thus, people will see objects which they define primarily according to their capacity for making sound, not doing so.

Will Five Floors touch its audience's imagination, encouraging people to create their own mental landscapes out of Kuhn's configurations of sound and light? Will it make people think afresh about the nature of sound and the act of listening? Or will it simply stand out as the most baffling of Angel Square's enigmas?

Michael Morris, the director of Artangel, who commissioned the work says: 'Mystery is something I associate with works of art. I think the event will be very accessible, mysterious but not mystifying. Kuhn is extremely original, a man of vision, he's above all interested in creating transformative experiences.'

There's also something pleasantly anarchic about using one of London's most expensive office-blocks for such an eccentric project. Perhaps this is where the real appeal of Five Floors lies. The VAT workers who are due to occupy part of the block will probably never see their workspace looking so extraordinary again. But will the project change their lives? According to Kuhn there's one man who now has to stop every time he stirs his coffee - after visiting one of Kuhn's earlier installations, he now hears the sound the spoon makes in an entirely new way. A transformative experience? For coffee-drinkers, at least, it could be positively mindboggling.

'Five Floors' at Angel Square, Tuesday 13 October to Sunday 25 October. Open 6pm-9pm. Admission free. Enquiries: 071-494 3780.

(Photograph omitted)