NEWSPAPERS lie on a coffee table, an outdated television set sits in a corner of the room and fading wallpaper harks back to a different era.

Like a time capsule frozen in the 1970s, an empty house on a Hebridean island sparked the imaginations of brothers Jamie and Lewis Wardrop.

Now they have recreated it in The Dwelling Place, a multimedia installation with four performances at CCA, Glasgow, on June 4 and 5.

With original film footage, live music, the spoken word and video projections, audience members are invited to explore the abandoned cottage that has been used as a metaphor to describe the history of the Highlands and Islands and its transition to the modern world.

The brothers, who grew up in Stirling and are now based in Glasgow, were inspired to produce the show, which they describe as gig meets performance meets gallery, after a visit to Leverburgh on Harris.

"When we stepped off the ferry we discovered this amazing abandoned house," remembers Lewis, 25, a filmmaker who studied at Edinburgh College of Art and has a background in producing documentary, fiction and experimental films.

"We were intrigued and our friend said it all she knew was the family it belonged to didn't want it any longer.

"It was a family home and as far as we know the father took ill and went to a retirement home and the children had grown up and left the house and no longer wanted to live there."

After lying empty for five or six years, sheep had invaded the kitchen and living room and winter's gale-force winds have tugged off corners of the roof and smashed windows.

Inside there was a stillness and a sadness that immediately attracted Jamie and Lewis.

"There were these incredibly pristine things still in the house, despite all the winter storms," says Jamie, 29, who graduated with a BA in acting from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and has gone on to create sound and video designs for theatre, art installations and club nights.

"There were newspapers, cigarette vouchers, paperwork and documents as well as photographs, all still incredibly intact.

"It was a bit like the Flannan Islands: that famous story of the lighthouse keepers who disappeared and the bread was still on the table. There was that kind of atmosphere in the house."

Film footage from that visit to the house, and another the following summer, will be shown at CCA in the conceptual work backed by Cryptic Nights, along with photographs. Lewis, who has played the fiddle since he was seven years old, will provide live music along with commentary and storytelling from Jamie.

The sense of sadness in the now empty home reflected the melancholy that exists across the islands, according to Jamie.

"People were forced to leave because they had been neglected," he says." There is that kind of haunting feeling - it just sits and exists there because of the treatment of the islands."

The brothers have a shared interest in the repetition of history and say it is encapsulated in the story of the islands inside this house - and the story of Scotland.

"The Outer Hebrides and the islands are the fringes of the UK and Europe, out in the sea and are often forgotten about, but for those who live there it was the centre of their universe," considers Lewis.

"They felt they were at the centre of the world and not the other way around. We're exploring the social and economic impact of changes over the years."

The show created by the brothers offers the audience the opportunity to step into the world of the cottage.

They can move around, watch film, look at photographs and listen to music.

"We we will be in the centre of the room operating all the technology: the laptops and projections and sound," says Lewis.

"So we want people to be able to see that, we don't want to hide it because there is an irony in what we're doing.

Adds Jamie: "We're talking about something that is quite traditional. We're telling the story of a place that is quite old and dilapidated with extremely high-tech technology. We want to show that contradiction and the irony of that. I think this is what the technology can do."

There will be four performances of the 45-minute show over two nights, with a Q&A on June 4.

They have made films and music together in the past but this project takes Jamie and Lewis in a whole new direction.

Touring the production around Scotland, especially to the islands, will be the next step, if they can get it organised.

Lewis hints there are other ideas they would like to explore in a similar format.

Jamie adds: "It is an experiment , we don't know if it will reach people in the way we think and that is really important to us because that is what the opportunity represents: to try it out and see if this quite ambitious way of making things does what it says.

"We have a responsibility as artists to do that."

The Dwelling Place by Jamie and Lewis Wardrop, CCA, Glasgow, June 4 & 5. www.cca-glasgow.com, www.cryptic.org.uk