Thin Air

Project Partner:
Granary

Date: 9 - 28 May 2005
Venue: St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral

Project Description:
The Granary Theatre and presented a unique sound installation, Thin Air, by the UK based company Artmusic.

Thin Air is specific to the building for which it is created. The work in St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral was made up of vocal material, sung and spoken, collected from Cork and newly composed material inspired by the building and the community.

Thin Air was composed from fragments which floated in the many spaces of St. Fin Barres. Over centuries, a multitude of people left traces, from masons carving decorative figures on the stonework to benefactors donating money for restoration and maintenance. The Cathedral contains numerous names, carvings and inscriptions, some long forgotten, as well as invisible traces: memories, stories, snatches of hymn tunes...

Installing the work was like scattering hundreds of these fragments in the space and it was the movement of the people who visited and moved throughout the cathedral that created the music, the interactive environment, achieved through the use of soundbeams and a digital sampler.

Thin Air is the first site-specific sound sculpture created by Helen Ottaway and Alastair Goolden. It is the second Artmusic installation to use Soundbeam technology along with other sound equipment to create a movement activated space. Allowing the composition to unfold through the activity of the ‘audience' the piece is both interactive and random. The encounter for the ‘audience’ is engaging and liberating as they become the engineers of their own experience.

Thin Air