head voice

Composer, Director, Performer - Nelle Anderson
Design, Carpentry, Fabrication - Jane Hamor

CalArts Spring 2023 Wave Cave Installation, March 14-21, 2023
Live Ground Performance at Kulak's Woodshed N. Hollywood, ​December 12/8

In this interactive installation with electronic and passively amplified sound, an opera singer and a scenic designer join forces to shape the WaveCave into the inside of a singer’s head—a room-sized, abstracted skull which visitors will explore with a headlamp, triggering light-sensor sound modules. Each module plays a recording of Anderson’s voice, mapped to correspond with Lilli Lehman’s famous bel canto training diagram. Every singer has their own matrix of spatial orientations and visualizations that trigger conducive body responses, developed through lessons with different teachers, literature, intuition, and experimentation. This installation reflects this; singing is as much a spatial-visualization practice as it is a sound practice.