From Meine Gesangskunst by Lilli Lehman

HEAD VOICE

The WaveCave at CalArts
Valencia, CA

March 14 - 21, 2023

Concept & Sound—Nelle J. Anderson
Scenic Design—Jane Hamor, assist. Holly Webb


In this interactive installation with electronic and passively amplified sound, an opera singer and a scenic designer join forces to form the metaphysical inside of a singer’s head—a room-sized, abstracted skull (made almost entirely of materials found and stolen on school campus) which visitors explore with a headlamp, triggering light-sensor sound modules. The modules play recordings of Anderson’s voice, mapped to correspond with Lilli Lehman’s famous bel canto training diagram seen here. 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, a trove of found and manipulated objects, as it is a sound practice.