Gossip Choir Collage

Gossip Choir Collage, is an interactive sound workshop. Looking for the sounds and rumors of the middle age, this experiment is an invitation to imagine the gossip, the voices and the songs floating around the rooms of the museum.

Together we collected characters, imagine sounds and played with the sounds together, live as performers and recorded as an interactive visual.

Workshop Structure

Warm-up (15 min)
At the beginning of the workshop, participants are guided through a vocal warm-up exercise.Then, they are briefly guided through different areas of the museum and divided into groups in front of various paintings.In these groups, they imagine the sound of a painting and act it out together.

Phase 1 - Exploring the museum (30 min)
Each participant takes a piece of paper and a pen.Then, they explore the rest of the museum on their own or in small groups.Once they find a character or object they would like to sonify, they draw it on the paper. Once they are satisfied with their selection, they cut it out and prepare to digitize the drawing and its corresponding sound.

Break - Audio Recording (15 min)
During the break, one of the workshop instructors will record each participant's sound and scan their corresponding drawing.All of the recordings and drawings will be integrated into the game engine so that they canbe arranged as the final collage after the break.

Phase 2 - Collective Analog Chorus (25 min)
While the samples and drawings are integrated into the game engine template, participants arrange and play with the analog collage. One of the workshop instructors acts as the chorus director, pointing to different drawings on the table.When an instructor points to a drawing, its creator produces the sound they associated with it.This creates a chaotic and playful chorus, bringing the collage to life.

End - Play time (10 min)
The digital collage is exported for playback on a touchscreen device.Participants can play the audio samples they created by tapping the digital scans of the drawings.

Past editions

The first edition of this workshop took place at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in the context of their exhibition “Zien en Geloven”.