9 December 2010 – 16 January 2011

Haunting sounds, uncanny echoes and the acoustic inscriptions of bodies will be encountered with the presentation of Sound Seam, a new film by artist Aura Satz.  Funded by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, Sound Seam explores the anatomy of hearing and the material qualities of sound and memory.  Drawing on Rainer Maria Rilkes’ text ‘Primal Sound’ (1919) which considers ‘playing’ the coronal suture of a human skull with a phonograph needle, Satz explores the body’s surfaces as potential repositories of unheard sounds. Capturing these hidden voices, Sound Seam turns to early recording technologies, with the grooves of records finding a corporeal mirror in the lines of the body.

Research and inspiration for the film resulted from a residency at UCL’s Ear Institute where Satz was based throughout 2009-10.  Viewers are drawn through the mouths of gramophone horns into a hypnotic sequence of imagery taken from auditory anatomy and sound recording technology, with the groove-like forms of highly magnified stereocilia and cochlea played against microscopic close-ups of gramophone grooves.  

The soundtrack is a dense narrative comprising two voices, pre-empting, echoing and overlapping one another, as they reveal a forensic love story.  Music, composed by Aleks Kolkowski, derives from a gramophone needle tracing the meandering furrow line where a skull is joined, and the otoacoustic emissions produced by the ear.  Over a hundred of these recordings have been written and overwritten onto wax cylinder or records to create unexpected scratches, glitches, loops and faint echoes.

Aura Satz says: “Sound Seam gives voice to the idea that every surface, in particular parts of our anatomy, is potentially inscribed with an unheard sound or echoes of voices from the past.”

Lucy Shanahan, Curator at Wellcome Collection, says: “Aura Satz has given us a haunting and cross-sensory love story. Appropriately for Wellcome Collection, Sound Seam offers us an entirely new vision of our own bodies.”

A small publication with contributions from Steven Connor and Tom McCarthy will be available during the exhibition.

Aura Satz: SOUND SEAM runs as a single screen projection in the Forum at Wellcome Collection from 9 December 2010 – 16 January 2011

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NOTES TO EDITORS

Media contact
Tim Morley
Senior Media Officer
T 020 7611 8612
E t.morley@wellcome.ac.uk

Aura Satz is a recipient of a Wellcome Trust Arts Award.  Sound Seam is the first Arts Trust funded project with a stand-alone display at Wellcome Collection.

Aura Satz (born Barcelona, Spain 1974) lives and works in London. She completed a practice / theory PhD in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where she held a Henry Moore post-doctoral fellowship between 2002-2004. Recent exhibitions and performances include: Language, exhibition and live event, VIVID, Birmingham (2010); Locate, Jerwood Space, London (2010); Turntable Tableau, ICA, London (2010); I Am Anagram, Barbican, London (2010); Automatic Ensemble performance, Church of St Leonhard (Leonhardskirche), Basel & Museum of Music Automatons, Seewen (2009), Glissolalia, Soundtrap III commission, installation and live event, Beaconsfield Gallery, London (2008); Automamusic, film screening and talk at Photographer¹s Gallery, London (2008).  Aura is a Fellow and Lecturer at the London Consortium. During 2009-2010 she was artist-in-residence at the Ear Institute, UCL.

Wellcome Collection is a free visitor destination for the incurably curious. Located at 183 Euston Road, London, Wellcome Collection explores the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future. The building comprises three gallery spaces, a public events programme, the Wellcome Library, a café, a bookshop, conference facilities and a members' club.

Wellcome Collection is part of the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. The Trust supports the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Its breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. It is independent of both political and commercial interests.