Sonorama (2015)

Claudia Molitor

Located on the train journey between London St Pancras and Margate, Sonorama is an audio work that offers sounds and voices for the otherwise silent view from the train, downloadable as an App for listening with headphones.

Imagining the journey itself as the ‘score’, Sonorama is a cycle of works and collected interviews, readings and original archival material that respond to the social history and present of the route. With each track relating to a different point or area along the train line, the work was informed through collaboration with historian David Hendy and the British Library Sound Archives. The tracks imagine topics as diverse as visio-centricity, Roman history and hop-picking with a corresponding variety of contributors such as flautist Jan Hendrickse, poet Lemn Sissay, Saxophonist Evan Parker and writer Charlotte Higgins.

Sonorama was curated and produced by Electra Productions in partnership with Turner Contemporary, with funding and support from Arts Council England, British Library, Southeastern Rail, Kent County Council Arts Investment Fund, Hornby, University of Kent.

App developed with Creative Computing, Goldsmiths, with design by Myah Chun-Grierson.

The Sonorama catalogue is published by Uniformbooks.

The Sketch of the Score for Sonorama, which was exhibited at Turner Contemporary from June to November 2015, was a graphic score of Molitor's reading of the journey and underpinned the thinking behind the compositions and the selection of the other materials that make up Sonorama.

“In developing the Sonorama I set out to intermingle my perception of the journey with some socio-cultural memories and contemporary concerns, in a way that does not merely present these notions/viewpoints but complicates rather than simplifies the way we might conceive of the journey. Listening to Sonorama whilst looking out of the train window in turn invites the audience to reflect on their own relationship to the journey and their experience of ‘being in the world’.”