Fulgurite Chamber

Fulgurite: a tubelike formation in sand or rock, caused by lightning. Chamber (music): music intended for performance in a private room or small auditorium and usually having one performer for each part. Commissioned as part of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Music Project, Fulgurite Chamber is the result of an on-going collaborative partnership between Derry-based composer, Adam Melvin, his brother, the Mercury Music Prize-winning artist Mark Melvin, and the London-based experimental music ensemble, Rarescale. Located in the exhibition space at Void, Fulgurite Chamber takes the form of an audio-visual performance installation incorporating multi-channel sound, neon light sculpture and live quarter-tone bass flute (an instrument of which only a handful of examples exist in the whole world). In a process that echoes ideas explored in previous works by Adam and Mark Melvin, familiar, arguably mundane audio-visual objects are deconstructed to form more unstable entities that support, and interact with, live instrumental performance. The result is a work that engages with notions of locality, dialogue, movement, co-existence and memory. It is the first multimedia piece to involve this rare instrument.