From headphone opera to mechanically-induced synaesthesia, not forgetting the snails

The Sonica Festival returns to Kings Place on 20 & 21 April 2018, with weekend of the best international audiovisual work, intimate installations and multi-sensory performances from Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Ireland alongside emerging talent from across the UK.

Amongst the highlights is NYXedelica, a headphone opera (!) from Belgian mezzo-soprano Els Mondelaers and Dutch composer Dyane Donck (both making their London-debut) in which we are promised a unique performance where modern classical composition meets psychedelic pop. The audience will don state-of-the-art binaural headphones to experience a unique 3D soundscape that is both intimate and immersive. Australia’s top AV artist Robin Fox will present a concerto for a laser beam in his brand new audio-visual piece Single Origin, the the third of his works for laser and sound, which explore the possibilities of mechanically-induced synaesthesia.

More intriguingly, 176 live snails will travel to King’s Cross to take centre stage in the UK premiere of Slow Pixel. French visual artist Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes and lighting designer Cyril Leclerc conduct an immersive sensorial experiment as they harness each snail with a small diode and speaker. Slow Pixel highlights Kings Place’s year-long theme of ‘time’ and invites the audience to slow down to a snail’s pace as the creatures draw their unique individual trajectories.

The festival, which first appeared at Kings Place in 2016, is an offshoot of the biennial festival in Glasgow celebrating sonic art for the visually minded. Sonica is the brainchild of Cryptic, the Glasgow-based producing arts house, and the 2018 festival marks Cryptic becoming an Artistic Associate of Kings Place.

Full details from Kings Place website.