Congregation

Award winning sound artist and composer Ray Lee has a childlike fascination with radio waves, magnetism, and “circles of ether,” the invisible forces that surround us.In Congregation, fifty audience members per show were split across five different starting locations in Newbury, where they were given small, silver, sonic spheres to carry.

Not knowing what to expect, they were asked to walk through the streets of the busy town centre, guided only by the sounds emitted by the spheres. If the sphere sounded happy, they knew that they were walking the right route; if it gave out sad sounds, that meant a wrong turning.

Curious passers by looked on, drawn in by the strangely beautiful electronic pulsing, chiming, and humming. The sphere carriers were eventually led together in a surreal, sci-fi processional ceremony, towards a bandstand, where the mass of ‘singing’ spheres played an electronic musical composition, and the audience became the orchestral players.