Organ of Corti (October 2014)

As part of an ongoing collaboration between the Organ Project at Union Chapel and Queen Mary I went on a five month placement at the chapel in which I investigated the ways that we experience music beyond hearing. Union Chapel is one of London’s best loved music venues and aside from being an architectural treasure it also houses a very historically important, and newly refurbished, organ.

At the heart of the placement project was an inquiry into how the Henry Willis organ at Union Chapel can be made accessible – by way of augmentation, translation or enhancement – to the deaf and hard of hearing community in Islington. The goal was the development of technologies aimed at expressing sound through tactile vibration. The research produced prototypes of extended listening devices for feeling sound. As a culmination of this research project I had the pleasure of co-curating an event at the chapel with Claire M Singer of the Organ Project. The evening entitled the Organ of Corti featured low frequency, inter-sensory new music for organ and electronics and showcased the prototype devices.