(LONDON, UK, Wednesday 13 March)
World Heart Beat today announced the World Premiere of ORIGIN, a unique deep listening art installation inviting audiences to be bathed in sound and light.
The innovative deep listening experience has been created by A Right / Left Project (Stephen Dobbie & Colin Nightingale), whose previous works include Beyond the Road that was experienced by over 100,000 people in London, at the Saatchi Gallery, and Seoul, the Hyundai ALT1 Gallery in Yeouido, and The Retiring Room at The Standard Hotel in London.
Dobbie and Nightingale are key creatives and Associates of Punchdrunk and have made many projects over the last 20 years, including Sleep No More(London, Boston, NYC and Shanghai)and The Burnt City (London).
ORIGIN will be the first time that World Heart Beat Embassy Gardens will host a sound installation, further showcasing the capabilities of the d&b Soundscape system that is permanently installed in the venue.
Born out of a desire to create a calming space to allow audiences to slow down and disconnect from the everyday, this mesmeric audio world is a cross-over between art and wellness. It explores themes around the cycle of life and our human connection with nature, fittingly debuting to the public over the May Bank holiday – which marks the transition from spring to summer.
Presented over World Heart Beat’s cutting-edge technology, this spatialised original soundtrack contains elements of sound design generated utilising Bronze, an animative music composition tool.
The project was developed in conversation with the scientific team at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, specifically Wakehurst, Kew’s wild botanic garden in Sussex, home of the Millennium Seed Bank.
ORIGIN also sees A Right / Left Project collaborate with internationally acclaimed artists, Toby Young (composer) and Ben Donoghue (lighting designer). Development of the project was also supported by Goldsmiths College’s Theatre & Performance department.
THE CREATIVE TEAM
Artists Stephen Dobbie and Colin Nightingale create projects that involve immersive storytelling and challenge conventional forms of interacting with art and music in transformative ways.
They co-created Beyond the Road with James Lavelle (UNKLE), a multi-sensory installation merging visual arts, music and film which premiered at Saatchi Gallery in 2019. They also created the experiential room as part of Sweet Harmony Rave | Today exhibition which was at Saatchi Gallery the same summer.
A new version of Beyond The Road was opened at Alt 1 Gallery at The Hyundai Seoul, South Korea in June 2021 and ran for six months.
They have both been involved with the multi award-winning Punchdrunk since 2002 as key members of the creative team, helping pioneer a form of ‘immersive’ theatre and creating shows including Sleep No More (London, Boston, NYC, Shanghai) and the BAFTA-nominated live event Third Day: Autumn.? Most recently for Punchdrunk, Stephen worked as Sound Designer and Colin worked as Creative Producer & Audience Experience Curator on The Burnt City which opened in spring 2022 in London and ran for 18 months.
They regularly work with other organisations and artists including designing the site and audio world for Peter Hudson’s giant kinetic sculpture Charon as part of Greenwich & Docklands International Festival 2022.
In 2023 they premiered The Retiring Room, a 20 minute deep listening experience in a hotel room at The Standard, London, created in collaboration with the musician and composer Toby Young and lighting designer Ben Donoghue.
Toby is an award-winning composer and producer who creates innovative and genre-defying contemporary classical music. His work is rooted in the theatricality of opera, the energy of electronic dance music and the emotion of film scores and has been commissioned by orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Rambert Dance Company. He has also co-written several chart-topping hits with drum and bass artists Chase & Status, and collaborated with artists such as the Rolling Stones, Duran Duran, Florence Welch, Kano, Snow Ghosts, MOKO, and Jacob Banks.?
As Music Supervisor for Punchdrunk, Toby contributed to soundtracks for a variety of TV and stage works including BAFTA-nominated productions for HBO and Sky Arts. As a producer he has created recordings for some of the country’s leading artists including Danielle de Niese, Stephen Hough, Nicola Benedetti, and Jess Gillam.
Ben is a Lighting Designer and Creative Director for live music, performance, fashion and large-scale live events. Recent work includes creating shows for artists such as Central Cee, Ezra Collective, Hot Chip and Tate McRae, as well as work with fashion designers including Huishan Zhang and Emilia Wickstead. Ben’s work with light also informs an ongoing creative collaboration with Right/Left Projects, creating immersive installation pieces such as Beyond The Road in London and Seoul, and The Retiring Room at The Standard, London. Ben joined multi-disciplinary design studio Flare Lighting in 2019 following several years at global creative agency, Imagination.
