Cochleae
Michaela Melián, Cochleae, 2023
Cochleae, 2023
Audio sculpture, installation, 3-d print, steel, loudspeakers, soundtrack 14:33
Four conch shell horns, produced using the 3-d print process, are equipped with small loudspeakers and are each arranged on a steel stand in a „choir“. The loudspeaker sculptures are based on Melián’s drawings of ammonites, 200-million-year-old fossilised sea snail shells such as those found in Germany. The shell is the original form of the loudspeaker and telephone. When we hold a shell to our ear, we think we can hear our blood or the sound of the sea. But actually we only hear the ambient sounds that mix in the spiral-shaped funnel to form a murmur.
Michaela Melián has created a composition for this installation based on a flowing cluster of the notes H-E-F-D (for Herford), played with string instruments (Ruth May, violin, Elen Harutyunyan, viola, Michaela Melián, violoncello).
The cathedral organ can also be heard with this tone sequence. Sounds from the Museum Marta Herford are incorporated into this composition: Voices and noises from the lobby, the exhibition rooms and the offices, the lift, the doors, the ventilation. The sounds around the museum building have also been incorporated, the birds, cars, bells, the stream and the wind.
Text: Anna Roberta Goetz, curator of the exhibition Long Gone, Still Here. Sound as Medium, Marta Herford, Nov 5, 2023 – Feb 2, 2024