Vocal Womb
Vocal Womb is a multimedia opera performance and installation by Dr Eve Klein that externalises the hidden, fleshy and deeply personal workings of the voice from inside a singer’s body. Vocal Womb premiered at MONA FOMA 2018, MONA (Museum of Old and New Art), Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
Participants sit across from an opera singer. She wears a laryngoscope, a thin viewing tube which passed through her nose providing real-time video of her vocal chords projected onto the walls of the chamber. She sings and her voice reverberates in the space. Audio is also captured by the laryngoscope from inside the singer’s body and contact mics are placed on her skin capturing the sounds of lungs inhaling and exhaling, and other internal organs gurgling with their everyday functions. Participants can blend these internal audio signals and amplify them into the chamber using a controller. By externalising these intimate, internal mechanisms in an exaggerated and overwhelming sonic and visual experience, participants are asked to confront the contradictions of our voices: who gets to wield them and what that means for our humanity.
