Listening Shell – V&A

Victoria & Albert Museum  2006-7
Special exhibit in SBTD exhibition
Sponsored and fabricated by DuPont™ and Ryalux Carpets
Design and sound curation by Dody Nash
Sound engineering by Joel Irons
photos © Dody Nash

The Listening Shell has been exhibited in various locations and in 2006, I was invited to exhibit it at the V&A. I thought it a good opportunity to demonstrate some of the exciting work which is currently happening in sound design and composing. With the help of Sound and Music (formerly Sonic Arts Network), I commissioned composers to write specifically for the shell.

Listening Shell Songbook composers are: Ignacio de Andrés (Argentina), Steven Brown (UK), Catherine Clover (UK/Australia), Thomas Gerwin (Germany), Karen Lauke (UK), Lea Pischke (Germany/UK), Matt Rogers (UK), Matthew Sansom (UK), Martin A Smith (UK), Michael Trommer (Canada), William Turner-Duffin (UK) – pictured, Brent Williams (Australia).

Composers were asked to view the Shell as a musical instrument which you sit inside: sound composition becomes the voice of the Shell. People tend to spend a long time in them – it’s an intimate micro-environment which prepares you to listen in a specific way: the spherical architecture sets up a special relationship between sitting within its safe den-like environment and starting to hear sounds played at a low level. Some sounds are familiar and some might not be… It’s a work to make you curious, engineered to make you listen carefully, as if the Shell is talking or even whispering to you……. Sound which teases the ear is the key.
Dody Nash

It is an interesting idea and I like the way it focuses on design for performance but is also referred to as sculpture. Sound sculpture has great currency at the moment and it certainly seems to operate within that framework of ideas, yet it concurrently deals with the unresolved question of how to present a number of sound works in the same public space without impacting on each other or using headphones.
Melbourne-based sound artist, Catherine Clover