Southerndown beach The piece, based on recordings made at Southerndown Beach in South Wales, explores the idea of coexisting opposites that the listening shells represent to me. The recordings of this expansive and exposed place contrast with the close intimacy of the shell; it combines the sounds of hard solid surfaces with those of foaming fluids, dry with wet, gritty with smooth. Within this unique ‘space for listening’ the soundtrack becomes a reflection on relationships between macro and micro, inner and outer.
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Listening Shell at the V&A until 2 March 2008 Ignacio de Andrés (Argentina) "The Listening Shell is a musical instrument which you sit inside: sound composition becomes the voice of the shell. People tend to spend a long time in them - it's an intimate environment which prepares you to listen in a specific way. The sound is played at a low level - some sounds are familiar and some might not be...sound which teases the ear.....It's a work to make you curious, engineered to make you listen carefully, as if the Shell is talking or even listening to you...."
Dody Nash is a designer specialising in music-based performance projects, often involving technical innovation, in the field of dance, opera, music and visual arts. Her work is underpinned by an ability and desire to realise musical form as a visual experience. Clients include English National Opera, Opera North, the Opera Group, Scottish Opera, South Bank Centre, DuPont, Rambert Dance Company, SharpWire, London Sinfonietta, Endymion Ensemble, Royal Opera House. In 2004 she created a major public installation, the ‘Berio Lounge’, at the Royal Festival Hall: as well as commissioning a wide range of artists, she developed designs exploring new technology, notably the ‘Listening Shell’ and the ‘Media Tables’, which have since featured in design exhibitions in Paris, London (‘100% Design’), on C4’s ‘Grand Designs’, as well as in the international design press.
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