This is a Voice launches at the Powerhouse Museum during Sydney Science Week and runs until the end of January. The exhibition delves into the personal, physical and psychological way we think about the voice – as well as what it means to our identity.
The exhibition includes artefacts from both the MAAS and Wellcome Collection, and it’ll feature specially commissioned works and performances from Australian artist and composer Lawrence English.
There’s a giant interactive sound ‘chandelier’ called A People’s Choir that invites everyone to record their aspirations and dreams for the future. There are 14 historical gramophone horns brought to life in a sound installation that considers what it means when people are not permitted to speak. And there’s the diary of Virginia Woolf from the British Library, detailing her struggle with ‘hearing voices’, and a work that explores the changing accents of Sydney. Plus, Lille Madden and Jonathan Jones have created a work that looks at reclaiming Indigenous languages.
On the scientific end of the spectrum, there are medical models of the human larynx, a chatbot designed to provide psychological care to Syrian refugees, and voice recognition software.