Music Research Seminar at Royal Holloway

Join us for our recent Department of Music Research Seminar, featuring some of the world's leading researchers in music.

About the talk

The unheard also glistens is a soundwalk that imagines hidden musical worlds in urban spaces, mixing storytelling with field recordings, foley sounds and music. It asks what if the lichen, or the weed, or the insect community has a musical life, what if we could hear that music, what if by listening we thought differently about the lichen, the weed, the insect and acted upon that new perspective. Instead of pressure washing it off walls, spreading weed killer or spraying insect repellent, might we look at these unknown worlds and marvel at their beauty? This talk, reflecting on the ideas underpinning the soundwork, will explore how a ‘speculative sonic story-telling’ that is rooted in an ethics of care may provide an experience that allows us to think differently about, and ultimately appreciate, our urban environment and its biodiversity.  

About the speaker

Claudia Molitor is a composer and artist whose work hovers between music and sound art, extending across contemporary art practices, such as video and installation art. Exploring the role listening can play in our world as well as embracing collaboration as compositional practice is central to much of her practice. Some larger scale work includes Sonorama, an episodic work for a train journey, with Electra Productions, Turner Contemporary and the British Library, which received a British Composer Award; The Singing Bridge, installed at Somerset House and Waterloo Bridge during the Totally Thames festival; Walking with Partch for the Cologne based ensemble Musikfabrik at hcmf//; the headphone piece Auricularis Superior at the World Music Days in Tallinn (Estonia);the audio-visual installation Listen to my World which toured to Wilde Western (Kortrijk/Belgium), Spor(Aarhus/Denmark), hcmf// (Huddersfield/UK), Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens/Greece), Time of Music(Viitasaari/Finland); A Thousand Words for Weather produced and commissioned by Artangel, installed at Senate House Library; and Fever for the 8 trumpet Monochrome Project and Fever, an eight trumpet and electronics work for The Monochrome Ensemble performed at hcmf// and Maerz Music (Berlin/Germany).

More information can be found at www.claudiamolitor.org

Admission is free, no booking necessary.