Musica Universalis, Barbican Arts Group Trust, London, UK, 2019

SOLO EXHIBITION | 12 - 29 SEPTEMBER 2019

Humans have long been driven by an urge to explore, to expand their borders from land, to sea, to sky, to space. Musica Universalis is a canticle for the last unexplored landscapes of the deep ocean and deep space.

An electronic system of feedback microphones and sound exciters designed by experimental electronic musician Dylan Henry Price (former alias Henry Toh) vibrates the sculptures to reveal the harmonic resonance of their materials such as cast bronze, steel, wood, polyurethane, and ceramic. The grounded “drums”, abstractly shaped as marine lifeforms, slowly keep time at a tenth of the speed of a standard clock, while suspended “bells”, shaped like wormholes, black holes, and other cosmological structures, sing a ghostly chorus of overtones that recall the vastness of sea and space. The generated sounds create a binaural effect similar to that used in sound healing practices to affect the human body and mind, creating the potential for transcendence, or at least an altered perception of space and time.