This summer, experience an all-encompassing aural and visual event featuring a collection of personal stories on hearing loss.
Platform 4’s acclaimed live event, Invisible Music, has been transformed into a new digital piece of work, blending film and soundscape to create an immersive and intimate meditation on hearing loss.
Revitalising their gig-theatre roots in an all-encompassing aural headphone experience, this digital world premiere hopes to raise awareness for the 12 million individuals in the UK with hearing difficulties. Invisible Music aims to explore the sensation of having the frequency of your life’s soundtrack altered.
Invisible Music is an insightful collection of moving stories, forming a loose narrative guided through by enchanting musical moments and verbatim audio. The stories are drawn from the personal experiences of Platform 4’s Artistic Director Catherine Church, her mother and others at her local lip-reading group.
With striking projections by digital artist Barret Hodgson, and the acoustic delights of Musical Director Pete Flood and Sound Designer Jules Bushell, the film seeks to describe the array of emotions that come with hearing loss; from anger to loneliness, as well as the unexpected comforts in what we often take for granted (feelings which many will resonate with from their own experiences in lockdown).
Mixing a variety of musical instruments and sampled voices, the company has created 15 short musically diverse moments, each examining a unique and often unexplored perspective. With a routine trip to Sainsbury’s becoming an exercise in the surreal, and everyday experiences proving abnormal and out of your control, participants can journey across the mesmerising soundscape and experience life behind the impairment.
Keeping accessibility at the forefront, this digital experience will be captioned, enabling the message at the heart of the piece to be shared by a broader audience.
Numerous arts venues have come together in support of Invisible Music and will also broadcast the video on their own channels. These include Theatre Royal Winchester; Jacksons Lane; Southbank Centre; Lighthouse Poole; Colchester Arts Centre; Pound Arts Centre; Turner Sims Southampton; The Hot Tin, Faversham; West End Centre; The Stables, Milton Keynes; The Point Theatre; The Spring Arts & Heritage Centre; City Eye, Southampton; Cambridge Junction; EM Forster Theatre, Tonbridge; Lakeside Arts, University of Nottingham; Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury; Exeter Phoenix; The North Wall; Marine Theatre; Quay Arts; and Norwich Arts Centre.
This project has been supported by emergency funding from Arts Council England.
When: From 15th July 2020 at 8pm
Where: Streaming online via platform4.org
£: Free
More info: www.platform4.org and www.facebook.com/4Platform