w-RAP: a plastic symphony for a synthetic century

MoDiP is delighted to announce that it has funding from Arts Council England to enable it to work with a composer, an artistic director, a number of schools and some professional musicians to develop a creative music project exploring the light and dark faces of plastics.

The music and words will be written by the musician, Karen Wimhurst, who works across genres, bridging jazz, folk and contemporary classical ensembles. She is currently undertaking a residency at MoDiP exploring the issues that plastics raise through the museum’s collection and library, and in conversation with the staff.

The musical composition will complement MoDiP’s current exhibition, Polyphonic: music through plastics, the word polyphonic describing music that is created by the coming together of different voices. The exhibition explores the role of plastics in the playing, broadcasting and listening to music and highlights how the use of plastics materials, with their truly democratising effect, enhances the ability for everyone to participate in, and enjoy music in all its forms. 

MoDiP's current exhibition, Polyphonic: music through plastics

w-Rap will have 3 versions:

w-RAP one

The first will be performed in early July 2018 at AUB with pupils drawn from primary and secondary schools, featuring w-RAP band constructed from plastic wrapping materials and other more traditional plastic instruments such as recorders, clarineos and clarinets, as well as the bespoke 'membrophones', especially made in music workshops for the project run by the music educationalist, Nick Crump. This schools performance will include both live and recorded sounds from the children involved in the project and two professional players on trumpet and turntables.

w-RAP two

Following on from this, composer Karen Wimhurst will take recordings made from the schools and manipulate and recycle them into a sound track, mixed into her own work which will include an operatic voice.

w-RAP three

The music from the second stage will then be staged as an intimate music theatre production directed by Katharine Piercey, Course Leader of Acting at the Arts University Bournemouth, to be premiered in the Lighthouse Sherling Studio on September 26th 2018.

A vinyl recording will be made of the various iterations.

Susan Lambert (Head of MoDiP)