polyphony
About polyphony
Hello and welcome to polyphony.
This is our programmers page. It is designed for presenters and commissioners across a variety of cultural contexts to learn more about the project, the artists involved and the ideas that are shaping it.
We’d like you to see this as an introduction to the project, a chance to check in with where we’re at. We’ll be adding new material to this page over the coming weeks and months.
Please do get in contact if you have any questions or want to talk further about the work. We’d love to hear from you.
Thank you.
What is the project?
polyphony is a new immersive sound installation and led by Verity Standen in collaboration with Sound Artist Yas Clarke.
In a departure from previous projects that place audiences in close proximity to live voices, polyphony will be an enveloping installation which places the audience at the centre of a designed sound score made up of conversations, falters and songs gathered from 32 individuals across the UK.
Throughout autumn 2021, we have interviewed people across the country about their voices, discovering the stories that have shaped the way people speak and sing. From Middlesbrough to London, Cumbria to Bristol, people who earn their living with their voice to those who were told at school that they ‘shouldn’t sing’. Different accents, different experiences. These conversations were recorded in all of their intimate detail and will then be brought together, spliced and woven to create a cacophony of voices.
As well as gathering playful and personal memories, we have captured all the extra vocal sounds we don’t normally focus on: breathing, swallowing, hesitating. This unique melting pot of sound the stuff we don’t normally hear when the detail is tuned out - is the heart of what we’ve made together.
Verity Standen Projects is known for creating musical experiences rich with harmony. Now we are tuning in to the beauty of people’s natural voices – weaving them together to create a vivid patchwork of human utterances.
polyphony is a touring sound installation with an accompanying podcast. It premiered at Mayfest 2022.
Installation
We are creating an installation, which will tour to a range of venues and spaces next year and beyond.
Download a technical specification for the piece here.
The piece will be flexible to a range of physical environments – from concert halls to community centres. The piece can be tailored to any social distancing restrictions that may be in place, as audience numbers can be adjusted accordingly with the piece running multiple times each day.
Stepping inside the installation, you will find yourself surrounded by speakers… and through those speakers you will hear the beautiful and varied detail of the human voice. You’ll hear people from across England recounting the journeys they have been on with their voices. And blended with those memories and reflections, you’ll hear all the extra in-between-sounds and under-sounds that we’d usually tune out.
The quality of the sound (the detail, the volume, the balance) will be carefully adjusted so that it has the potential to elicit ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) in the listener – this is a specific response that some people experience when listening to certain sounds: a tingling sensation, often accompanied by a feeling of relaxation and pleasure. The ambition is for this experience to be a deeply sensory one.
There may be areas of the installation in which the audience can ‘play’ the sound: triggering voices and building their own miniature symphony (we don’t know what technology we will do this yet, but this kind of intimate interaction is the intention). And there will be also be opportunities for people to add their own voice to the melting pot. But the centre of the piece is a swirling, carefully structured sound work that will surround audiences in a medley of stories and song.
Podcast
In a series of audio episodes, audiences will also be able to hear the voices and stories from the project played out in a longer form. In these episodes, we’ll get to know the team of voice-collectors as they travel to meet people, as well as the sounds they discover so we’ll dig deeper into the stories of the collecting too. Like the installation, this will all be recorded in intricate up-close quality, so we’ll hear all the vocal details we don’t usually acknowledge.
The podcast is designed to be enjoyed as a self-contained listening experience, or as an accompaniment to the live installation (eg. with little booths in the venue).
Why this project?
Verity Standen
My research into ASMR, and these attempts to capture recorded voices in up-close detail, is part of an ongoing fascination with the human voice and intimacy. I experience ASMR strongly myself, so this feels like a golden opportunity to learn more about it and try to play with it creatively. And we’re doing this now because the kinds of physical intimacy that I usually explore with my work have been impossible over the last 18 months (and won’t feel completely safe for a long while yet).
I’ve spent a lot of the last decade working with community choirs: running workshops, hosting projects, creating performances. Not only is the music itself often joyful, but there is also something special that happens when people come together to sing. People start talking about the journeys they’ve been on with their voice and this unlocks so many rich, surprising, funny, moving stories. People often describe singing as ‘a release’… this is an opportunity to explore what it is that is being released. So many times, we hear people say they were told that they ‘can’t sing’ – at school, by a parent, by joking friends – and then thirty years later those people are finding immense joy in realising that they can (because everyone can actually sing).
And, finally, because I’m excited where these conversations might lead… The idea of ‘voice’ can spiral off in a hundred different directions. We hope to create a kind and playful space in which people can share their stories, so that we can celebrate how different people feel about their voices.
What we are looking for
We are a looking to have conversations with potential commissioning and presentation partners.
We are looking to build a tour through 2023. Due to the intricacies of the installation and the significant audience development potential we’d ideally like to place this in situ for 2-3 weeks in each location.
We are also looking for digital collaborators which will enable us to explore opportunities to present the podcast series.
Key Contacts
Kate Yedigaroff - Co-Director MAYK - 07951698012 - kate@mayk.org.uk
Hattie Gregory - Producer MAYK - 07835037925 - hattie@mayk.org.uk
Verity Standen - Lead Artist - veryteastanden@gmail.com