CURATORS defended their decision to include a tape of flatulent noises as part of the rehang of Tate Modern yesterday, despite complaints from staff that it drives them mad.

Martin Creed’s Work No 401 is a recording of nine minutes of the artist blowing raspberries into a microphone, which is played back on a loop. It can be heard throughout the new Material Gestures wing, which contains works by Claude Monet and Mark Rothko.

Vicente Todoli, the Director of Tate Modern, said that Work No 401 was a case of art reflecting life. “This kind of acoustic — you hear it every day of your life,” he said. “This is not a cathedral with the relics of a saint in which you’re supposed to kneel down in front of it.”

Frances Morris, the permanent collections curator at Tate Modern, said that she expected Creed’s tape to draw ridicule. “Many of these great works of art were originally deliberately provocative and were met with utter derision. We wanted to rough it up a bit and keep it like real life.”

Creed is best known for Work No 227: The Lights Going On and Off, his Turner Prize-winning installation in which a pair of gallery lights were programmed to turn on and off at regular intervals.

One of the gallery’s staff said that she dreaded having to sit near the raspberry noises for her 30-minute shifts. “I think it’s horrible,” she said. “We move every half hour, but you can hear it all over the floor.”

Ms Morris said that it did not spoil the atmosphere in the rest of the gallery, despite being clearly audible in the Rothko room, which is designed so that visitors can sit in quiet contemplation.

The rehang, of which The Times is media partner, comprises 400 works, 40 per cent of which are at Tate Modern for the first time since it opened in 2000. It cost more than £1 million. About a fifth of the works are new acquisitions, including pieces by Anish Kapoor, Tacita Dean and Christian Marclay.

Kapoor’s new work, Ishi’s Light, is one of several interactive exhibits. A gallery guard is positioned to encourage people to step inside a reflective plastic tube without touching it. “Children love it, but adults want to know why they can’t touch it. If people touch it, they make smudges,” he said.

Cildo Meireles’s Eureka/Blindhothand is designed so that visitors can step inside a net chamber, pick up rubber balls and drop them on the floor.

Guards also reported confusion in the minimalism wing. One staff member stationed by a thermostat insisted that it was not a work of art: “A lot of people ask me that.”

Famous works shown at the gallery for the first time include Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam!, the iconic Pop Art painting that shows a fighter pilot blowing up an enemy jet.

A spokesman for the gallery said that not everyone would understand the fart tape. Asked what it meant, he said: “It’s art, baby.”

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