Castrato.
Citation Summary:
Stidworthy, I. T. (2016), Exhibition, participating artist (new commission), Castrato, 4-screen multi-channel video/sound installation, in: ‘This is a Voice’, group exhibition, Wellcome Collection, London (12/04/16 - 17/07-16) and MAAS Museum of Applied Arts, Sydney, Australia (11/08/17 - 28/01/18).§
- Submitting institution
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Liverpool John Moores University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32IS3
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Wellcome Collection, London. MAAS Museum of Applied Arts, Sydney, Australia.
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first exhibition
- July
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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1 - Contemporary Art Lab
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Castrato (2016) was invited for ‘This is a Voice’, the Wellcome Collection exhibition of 2016 (audience 76, 577), touring to Powerhouse and MAAS, Sydney in 2017/18 (audience 170, 000). It included British and international works and materials from diverse contexts, featuring artworks by five contemporary artists known for their work with the voice. In London a programme of weekly public events ran over three months, in which Stidworthy presented and spoke in the panel discussion ‘What does the Voice Say about You’ (20/06/16) and was interviewed for BBC Radio4 Front Row (13/04/16, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0766g5k). Together, exhibition and public programme ‘… explored how the (…) voice locates us socially, geographically and psychologically.’ Stidworthy presented two existing artworks and the new installation, Castrato, which developed as part of long-term research into ‘voicing on the borders of language’, here drawing on research about voice, self-hood and gender. In the installation, three videos and a 3-channel soundtrack stage subtle confusion between the bodies and voices of a boy treble, a female soprano and a countertenor. These are the three vocal types used to simulate the castrato voice (now lost to history) through digital merging techniques pioneered in 1994 by experimental sound laboratory IRCAM (Paris), and used in the film Farinelli. Castrato was an attempt to produce an echo of the idealised castrato voice by merging the voices of three contemporary singers - not through sophisticated technology, but by playing with subjective and cultural expectations and triggering the powerful impulse to perceptually stitch body and voice together. The work blurred distinctions between bodies, voices and genders, drawing visitors into different modes of listening. It engages with the history of discussions around synch-sound; it contributes to debates around voice, gender and identity and awareness of socio-cultural attitudes and expectations concerning gender difference.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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