MANCHESTER School of Art’s Dr Toby Heys has created Furniture Music – a solo sound installation at the LEVEL Centre in Derbyshire.
The Furniture Music installation features music and a range of sounds, including infrasonic (very low sound), ultrasonic (very high sound) and sonic (sound we can actually hear).
The sounds are played through an array of unique speakers built into specially made furniture that guests can engage and interact with. The sound can be controlled from a leather-clad bench in the middle of the gallery space.
Dr Toby Heys, Digital Technologies Research Fellow, said: “The Furniture Music installation focuses on those types of sound at the edge of perceptions. It explores how these sounds renegotiate our somatic interfaces – the skin, bone and muscle tissue that we imagine constitutes the boundary markers between ourselves and the world that surrounds us.”
Toby has also produced sound installations all over the world including work for The Tate Britain (2015), the International Digital Arts Biennial in Montreal, Canada (2014) and many more museums and galleries.
For over 25 years, LEVEL has pioneered the transformative power of the arts to enrich the creative lives of people with learning disabilities, often using multi-sensory activities and stimulating arts to engage people. Located in rural Derbyshire, the LEVEL centre houses a contemporary arts space, facilities and technical resources normally only found in cities.
