ENTER EXHIBITION
EXPLORE THE COLLECTION
“The Turbine windmills have always been an enigma and mystery to me. Even though they are huge structures their rotation is soft and quiet. One can hear the sound of electricity generated in the air through small noise clusters which seem to float around the turbines and their energy is immense beautiful and terrifying all at once. Whenever I see these turbines I imagine them communicating to each other across the barren landscape with a language that is uniquely audible to them. For me these Massive Angels capture strange perspectives and their presence is full of contradictions. The work is gentle, dense, emotive and full of grains of noise from field recordings.”
Jo Thomas
In 2020 artist Jo Thomas spent time in North Wales UK crossing the landscapes of the highest point of Anglesey in the rotating wind farm Trysglwyn Fawr. Here she met vast areas of countryside and fields inhabited only by giant Turbine windmillsthat constantly work to produce electricity thanks to the airstreams. Those places, which hint at limited human presence, are privileged for the passage of the wind, captured and transformed by the Turbine windmillswho dance elegantly in the landscape. Their sound, recorded by the artist through a binaural microphone, returns a remote and inaccessible motion making us perceive their mechanical and metaphysical functioning with the infinite time through which they produce clean energy. By elaborating the composition Massive Angels (2021), Jo Thomas turns to the invisible and sonorous electricity; she urges our gaze to imagine and get closer to what would otherwise be inaccessible. To reach the hidden beauty of these white supernatural presences, we must close our eyes and listen to their extraordinary linguistic code: a sort of sound message in "Enochian", the language of angels.
Jo Thomas
(b. 1972, UK) lives and works in London. Jo Thomas works as composer and sound artist. She has worked on public commissions, concerts, galleries, sound walks, privately commissioned work. In her process, she works with electronic sound working mostly with glitch, with fine detail. In 2012 Jo Thomas won the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Digital Musics and Sound Art with the work Crystal Sounds of a Synchrotron. Her work has been performed in public spaces across the world and is released by the label Entr’acte, Holiday Records Naxos, NMC Recordings, The Tapeworm and Soft Apple. She has written for Vinyl and CD, bespoke instruments and has worked on a combination of experimental work. Recent works include the project Ports of Call, The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place (2019), A Sketch of Nature, site-specific work for a multi-faith chapel in the New Grange Hospital, Cwmbran (2020-21) and In a still place Digital commission based on the sculptural sound installation Speaking Tubes, IOU Theatre, Halifax (2020). Jo currently runs a sound walking project in North London with her label Soft Apple.
Jo Thomas
In 2020 artist Jo Thomas spent time in North Wales UK crossing the landscapes of the highest point of Anglesey in the rotating wind farm Trysglwyn Fawr. Here she met vast areas of countryside and fields inhabited only by giant Turbine windmillsthat constantly work to produce electricity thanks to the airstreams. Those places, which hint at limited human presence, are privileged for the passage of the wind, captured and transformed by the Turbine windmillswho dance elegantly in the landscape. Their sound, recorded by the artist through a binaural microphone, returns a remote and inaccessible motion making us perceive their mechanical and metaphysical functioning with the infinite time through which they produce clean energy. By elaborating the composition Massive Angels (2021), Jo Thomas turns to the invisible and sonorous electricity; she urges our gaze to imagine and get closer to what would otherwise be inaccessible. To reach the hidden beauty of these white supernatural presences, we must close our eyes and listen to their extraordinary linguistic code: a sort of sound message in "Enochian", the language of angels.
Jo Thomas
(b. 1972, UK) lives and works in London. Jo Thomas works as composer and sound artist. She has worked on public commissions, concerts, galleries, sound walks, privately commissioned work. In her process, she works with electronic sound working mostly with glitch, with fine detail. In 2012 Jo Thomas won the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Digital Musics and Sound Art with the work Crystal Sounds of a Synchrotron. Her work has been performed in public spaces across the world and is released by the label Entr’acte, Holiday Records Naxos, NMC Recordings, The Tapeworm and Soft Apple. She has written for Vinyl and CD, bespoke instruments and has worked on a combination of experimental work. Recent works include the project Ports of Call, The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place (2019), A Sketch of Nature, site-specific work for a multi-faith chapel in the New Grange Hospital, Cwmbran (2020-21) and In a still place Digital commission based on the sculptural sound installation Speaking Tubes, IOU Theatre, Halifax (2020). Jo currently runs a sound walking project in North London with her label Soft Apple.
21 April - 20 May 2021
OTO SOUND MUSEUM constitutes in a collection of sound works. The recognition and conservation of works of intangible nature is one of the missions that characterized the museum since its foundation. The presentation of soundscapes in the museum marks their entry into the collection, which also becomes an archive for consultation available to anyone interested, including researchers, curators or institutions.
Massive Angels, 2021
Jo Thomas (1972, UK)
Headphones or speakers recommended.
Gentle listening level.
Gentle listening level.
00:00 / 37m 18s, sound
Please tap on left sphere
to access the exhibition.
to access the exhibition.