Mushrooms are a significant feature of my enquiry into the visibility of sound’s sculptural embodiment. They are sponge-like, absorbent forms, physically holding the shape of the audio speakers, which comfortably and intrinsically sit within. This sense of embodiment is not only visual, in the sense of being able to see the speakers inside the mushrooms, but also extends to the sonic realm. The sounds emerging from the mushrooms are recordings of frogs and grasshoppers: bodily sounds, taken in their natural environment, reframed and highlighted within the mushrooms. 

(detail from the installation 'Flight')

Mushrooms are a significant feature of my enquiry into the visibility of sound’s sculptural embodiment. They are sponge-like, absorbent forms, physically holding the shape of the audio speakers, which comfortably and intrinsically sit within. This sense of embodiment is not only visual, in the sense of being able to see the speakers inside the mushrooms, but also extends to the sonic realm. The sounds emerging from the mushrooms are recordings of frogs and grasshoppers: bodily sounds, taken in their natural environment, reframed and highlighted within the mushrooms. 

Voegelin (2012) describes crickets in terms of silence and our inability to listen to small sounds; “The sound of crickets announces the silence of the imminent and remains silent when all else starts cranking up the volume” (p.98). The use of silence, she suggests, is a “sonic waiting [that] generates the expectation to hear something and makes for a very focussed listening”. The more dominant sound pieces on display hold a significant element of silence for this reason, allowing the small sounds to become present. 

(detail from the installation 'Lawnmower'

A significant strand of my practice involves an enquiry into the relationship between the visual and the sonic, between sound and object. My work is concerned with the way in which we ‘see’ sound physically, as an integral component of the sculpture, exploring the embodiment of sound within the object. 

Flight presents the sound of a loud flock of birds which take flight,  almost as if from the logs where the speakers sit. These are accompanied by quiet, small sounds emerging from small speakers embedded inside mushrooms and become apparent to the viewer during the silence of 'Flight'. 

Flight

Rusty pipes convey a sense of travel, synaesthetically placing the sounds emerging from within. This sense of connectivity and travel materialises in other forms in the connecting the sound sculptures. 

Traverse

Crossing boundaries between Fine Art, Performance and Music; Tonewood.

A collaboration between Estelle Woolley, Robert James Maclese and Oscar South, this site specific performance is set in the woodland for the exhibition 'Above and Below', 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUMV_fu_1f4

Tonewood

The sounds emerging from the earwigs are composed of whispered Facebook statuses, layered over each other. The words and sentences, difficult to make out throughout the looped recording, make the viewer go closer towards the work to try and discover what is being said, only to confront his or her fears. I aim for the viewer to not only question their reaction toward the materials used within this installation but to question today’s modes of communication, particularly social networking sites such as Facebook. In comparison to just hearing one voice on a telephone; we hear many often arbitrary voices all at once, and feel compelled to listen.

(Post)modern Communication: Facebook

Otherness 
2014
Plaster, duck egg shells, concrete, earphones, car speaker (and sound recording) 

‘Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating… We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sounds but as musical instruments.’
– John Cage, The Future of Music, 1937

Formal arrangements partly take inspiration from the work of Rolf Julius, encountered at the Hamburger Bahnhof gallery in Berlin, with his expanded notion of music, “music for eyes and ears”. Julius arranges found objects with sounds emanating from them, presenting the leads from the musical devices like delicate drawings along the space of the gallery floor.  

The the delicate, porcelain-like sounds are a recording of a column of duck egg shells, clanging against a nylon thread. 

Otherness

The sound sculpture comprises of a triptych of stacked plates on stands, with the sound of a dripping tap physically embodied within each stack. Modified to be at slightly different pitches and times, an organic arrangement of sounds come in and out of sync, inspired by the Minimalist music of Steve Reich. The resulting sound is both meditative and torturous. 

Untitled

'Hydroscape' is the curious sound of a saucepan lid as it had just been removed from the dishwasher. Its unexpected chirps and ticks which altnernate in tempo remind us of a Geigercounter. Best listened to in a quiet, contemplative space. 

Hydroscape.2016.Estelle.Woolley

Experimental site-specific live sound performance. 
Crossing boundaries between Fine Art, Performance and Music ; A collaboration between Cae de Lune, Robert James Maclese and Estelle Woolley.
The performance is set in the Chelsea College of Art's former morgue. Each performer will play a saw with a string bow, creating an uncanny soundscape from which the morgue will echo, the cold hard walls the perfect amphitheatre . Draped in white from head to toe, our performers will make allusions to the former inhabitants.

Frequency of the dead

A close engagement with the environment is at the core of my research. The act of closely looking at the world around us is pertinent to the philosophy of Heidegger; the idea of paying attention to the things that we might normally disregard. This circumspective approach to looking parallels the idea of listening. Salome Voegelin describes “an aesthetic and philosophy of sound art” as an act of engaging with the world “…based on the discovering drive… a drive to knowing”.

A significant strand of my practice involves an enquiry into the relationship between the visual and the sonic, between sound and object. My work is concerned with the way in which we ‘see’ sound physically, as an integral component of the sculpture, exploring the embodiment of sound within the object. The ‘capturing’ of sounds within the environment is integral to the making process. Using a makeshift parabolic dish and a dictaphone, I adopt an attitude of openness to being in the world, absorbing environmental sounds which spark inspiration. Likewise, this approach is embraced in the gathering and collecting of curious objects of synaesthetic correlation, and in the construction of materials.  I explore a sculptural dialogue between materials and forms in relation to the site specificity of space, which in turn may become activated by the transient material of sound. 
