Thin Air

Helen Ottaway and Alistair Goolden

2007

Thin Air was a site-specific sound installation for Dorchester Abbey, in which the movement of the audience triggered remote whispers of conversation, music and ambient sound.

Composer Helen Ottaway and sound designer Alastair Goolden were commissioned by Oxford Contemporary Music and Oxford Playhouse, in association with Dorchester Abbey, to make the site-specific sound installation Thin Air.  Housed by the whole of the building, the movement of the audience triggered remote whispers of conversation, music and ambient sound.  The two-week installation contributed to the 2007 Dorchester Festival.

Helen Ottaway is a performer and musician with a wide field of activity, nationally and abroad.  She has worked with Lumiere& Son, I.O.U., Graeme Miller and Insomniac.  A founder member of new music/performance groups Regular Music and 3 or 4 Composers, she has also worked for Salisbury Cathedral, the BBC and English Nature.  During 2009 she collaborated with the performance artist Franko B.

Alastair Goolden has been Head of Sound at the Bristol Old Vic and worked freelance for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Old Vic Theatre, Royal National Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Young Vic, Almeida Theatre, Cambridge Theatre Company and Manchester Royal Exchange, among others. His academic posts include Senior Lecturer in Sound Design, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts,  and Lecturer in Sound and Lighting Design, Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama.  Technical collaborations and consultancies include Artmusic, Footprints, Lachrymae, Thin Air, Line Dances and The Opera Room.

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