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Digital Prize
Winner 2022
The Sound Voice Project: Exhibition V © Sound Voice 2021 i
Winner of the FEDORA Digital Prize
€50,000 with the support of Kearney
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The Sound Voice Project: Exhibition V: An immersive digital-opera installation created with partners in healthcare, technology, science and biomedical research, and people with lived experience of voice loss. Dynamic integration of voices from across the globe in an ever-changing and evolving work of art.
World Premiere: 2023/2024 Season - Aldeburgh, United Kingdom
Presentation
The Sound Voice Project is a unique series of immersive digital-opera installations for flexible, interactive spaces exploring voice and identity: co-created with interdisciplinary partners in healthcare, technology, science and biomedical research, and people with lived experience of voice loss.
The project celebrates and explores the intrinsic value of the human voice; a development of The Sound Voice Project 2021, a surround-sound digital-opera triptych. We’ll create new installations and apply ground-breaking digital technologies to expand the current work, touring to arts venues, non-traditional performance spaces and hospital settings. The project is a unique collaboration between experts in voice synthesis, interactive immersive sound design, video design, AR and motion capture, and biomedical research; soft robotics and implantable larynxes.
This crowdfunding campaign focusses on The Singing Willow; a new chapter of the Sound Voice Project Exhibition V(oice) which will enable people from across the globe to contribute their own unique voices to an organically evolving and ever-growing new digital work. We ask audiences to consider: What is a voice? What happens when it is gone? The project invites universal reflection on where and how voice and identity intersect, enabling dynamic dialogue and participation, integrated within the work of art itself. Interactive, digital technologies will enable intimate proximity and full immersion within powerful stories that are rarely platformed, yet have universal relevance.
The Singing Willow is our next ambitious addition to The Sound Voice Project.
This new immersive work transforms and expands an original work 'The Willow Tree' from the Sound Voice Project series. (See below for more detail of the original piece*). It will be created through a series of creative collaboration workshops with interdisciplinary healthcare and technology professionals and facilitated physical spaces designed to support dialogue about voice and identity.
It will expand the existing installation to enable audiences to explore universal themes relating to voice and identity. How do communities perceive and understand their own and each other’s voices. What does it mean to capture or withhold a voice? How do we value, listen and treasure voice in society?
Cross-industry partners include five hospitals, a cutting edge biomedical research group at UCL creating implantable larynxes, Parkinson’s clinicians, speech and language experts, digital technology companies specialising in vocal synthesis (Cereproc, Respeecher), medical device companies (Pentax Medical, ATOS) and UCL’s department of Healthcare and Engineering.
Working with voice synthesis experts, we’ll design online platforms and ground-breaking ‘speech to sung voice’ modelling to capture audience voices.
This crowdfunding campaign will enable the development of this technology to enable the digital capture of hundreds of people's voices across the globe and also fund voice capture in localised, in person recording sessions. The funds will enable:
1) A global, online recording facility; the creation of a digital platform that can capture voices and audience reflections. These voices will be integrated within the ever evolving, organically growing Singing Willow.
2) In-person recording sessions for small groups affected by voice loss including those affected by Parkinson's disease.
3) Large scale creative engagement workshops to capture massed sung voices.
Please see the 'Why should you support us section' for more information.
*The Singing Willow is an immersive transformation and development of a concert chamber work, 'The Willow Tree' from the Sound Voice Project.
The Willow Tree is an ancient spirit who steals and consumes the voices, identity and soul of humans in order to survive. This scene is the story of one man who fights back against the Willow Tree. In the original chamber work, the man is performed by three voices: a professional baritone, and two performers who have Parkinson’s. The text was written after hours of discussion with people affected by Parkinson's disease, their carers and healthcare professionals connected to voice rehabilitation.
We will transform and extend this work using hundreds of audience voices into an immersive digital installation.
Video Presentation
Artistic Team
The project team brings together world-class experts from across the arts, healthcare, science, technology, biomedical research, neuroscience and commercial technology sectors. The projects continues an exciting collaboration between composer Hannah Conway, video designer Luke Halls, sound designer David Sheppard, and librettist Hazel Gould. Further information about the core creative team is given below. This phase of the project will be an opportunity to collaborate with new artists, and will continue our collaboration with world-class opera singers including Lucy Crowe, Roderick Williams and Iestyn Thomas. Creative Producer Katherine Wilde brings a wealth of expertise as a producer, strategic thinker and artistic programmer. She has over 15 years of experience as a specialist producer making new multi-disciplinary work in collaboration with communities and young people, including work for English National Opera and MIF. Sound Voice Medical Director Thomas Moors is a Belgian medical doctor with a special interest in voice and the integration of art into healthcare. He develops Sound Voice’s professional networks internationally. In 2015 he founded Shout at Cancer, a charity for people who have had a laryngectomy. He received the Points of Light Award from the British Prime Minister in 2017 for his charitable work and achievements. We are working with Professor Nick Tyler at PEARL (Person Environmental Activity Laboratory), UCL, to explore the development of environments for cultural experiences, supporting the work we are creating to be experienced in hospital wards. Further cross-industry partners include five hospitals, a cutting edge biomedical research group at UCL creating implantable larynxes, Parkinson’s clinicians, speech and language experts, digital technology companies specialising in vocal synthesis (Cereproc, Respeecher), medical device companies (Pentax Medical, ATOS) and UCL’s department of Healthcare and Engineering.
