Reflecting and referencing the built environment is a very important aspect of Birmingham Book Festival, Associate Director Jonathan Davidson tells me over a glass of wine in an empty retail unit deep within the Pavilions shopping centre.

The diversity and complexity of Birmingham’s unique urban landscape is met head-on by the festival team through imaginative programming, which is why we’re standing in the bankrupt shell of the Natural World store. The space is home, until 16 October, to a specially commissioned site-specific sound installation, Boy You Turn Me; the brainchild of flash fiction writer and novelist David Gaffney, scored by contemporary classical composer Ailís Ní Ríain.

The project combines two layers of text and music to tell a story about two aspects of the city – public and private lives – and to explore the concept of people inhabiting inner worlds and outer worlds, micro and macro, an idea introduced to Gaffney by a man trying to buy an individual chess piece in a neighbouring outlet. Much of the story’s inspiration, and even certain sections of dialogue, is drawn from conversations with shoppers, shop assistants and security staff, and their memories of the area and how it has changed with time. To add to the authenticity, the two characters, Sherry and Vince, are voiced by locals, which also fits with the festival’s focus on language and the writing process, not just books themselves.

Gaffney says: “It was great to watch people’s reactions as they listened to the text and music. Some of the older people became transfixed by the references to Birmingham’s past, and one couple said it was sad to hear about the old Co-op, which they remembered stood on the Pavilions site. People seemed to enjoy being inside the specially adapted counter listening to the inner layer, the more intimate parts of the piece, and lingered in there for longer.”

The inner layer of sound is listened to within a structure that exaggerates the feeling of isolation induced by the shop’s old horseshoe tillpoint – “I felt like I was suffocating behind that counter, round me like a cage,” says Sherry. This inner layer does feel introverted and intense, with the philosophical and slightly sad speech and a more sympathetic and subtle soundtrack. Outside the ‘tower’, and sometimes bleeding in over the top of it, the second layer of story and score is much more challenging and confrontational, with discordant, slightly uncomfortable, overtones.

It takes a short while to adapt to the different noises clashing together, but you soon become immersed in the world, natural or otherwise, being described. Project Manager Lauren Davies says people have been dropping in in droves – either because they’ve already heard about the installation or because they just happened to be passing – and their comments have been very positive. “It’s like being Alice and falling down the rabbit hole”, says one feedback form. “It’s bizarre in a good way – I find it strange but attractive”, says another. But perhaps the most apt for Birmingham Book Festival is: “It is very very good. It’s got a lot about the local area in the story; it should be in libraries.”

Sarah-Clare Conlon blogs about arts and literature on Words & Fixtures.