The Sonic Body is an audio-installation that uses interactive technology to create an orchestra of the human body. Developed as a collaboration between four interdisciplinary artists and a heart surgeon, the installation brings together art and medical-science to reveal the unheard sounds of the body.
The installation, created by artists Harry Neve, Thomas Michalak and Anna Orliac, appears on its exterior as a neutral cylindrical pod. Once inside however, the audience is immersed in a contrastingly tactile and multi-sensory space filled with sculptural fabric forms that evoke the shapes and contours of inner body parts. The audiences’ movements and contact with the installation triggers a symphony of sounds to be played that have been reco–rded from within the body.
The Sonic Body was inspired by the traditional practice of listening to the body to diagnose illness, and began as an investigation into the scope of sonic activity that exists within the human body. Medical professionals were consulted to help understand which parts of the body make sounds and why, and various methods were used to record unusual and unheard sounds from deep within the body’s organs, muscles, bones and veins. These included conventional medical equipment, such as a stethoscopes, as well as more unorthodox devices such as a hydrophone (normally used for recording aquatic-life) to capture sounds in liquid, an anechoic chamber to record microscopic external sounds, and equipment to detect and re-tune the body’s ultrasonic activity, which is usually inaudible to the human ear.
The material gathered, and relayed via the installation, reveals a spectrum of bodily acoustics beyond that of just stomach gurgles and heartbeats. There is a lung that sounds like a baby crying, an intestine that sounds like a rainforest, and there is even the anatomical sound of a female orgasm that sounds like high-pitch whistling. The project aims to create a unique way of thinking about and experiencing the body, through sound.
Funded by a Wellcome Trust, Sciart award.