The Looking Glass

The print below is the first in the series of a collection of works. Made in response to the liminal work of Margaret (Megan) Watts-Hughes (the 19th Century Welsh singer and Philanthropist) who recorded her voice through a device she created, called the Eidophone on to glass plates, spread with a pigmented paste, with the resulting images of plants, flowers and landscapes. (These forms are known as Cymatics, from the  Ancient Greek: κῦμα, meaning "wave”) Two of these images have been redrawn in concentric circles for this print reflecting on the observations that the shape of sound is spherical. The discovery of the ‘voice figures’ – never reproduced in colour and until recently considered lost – presents a unique opportunity to revisit and re-contextualise a liminal figure in historical studies of sound and the voice through historical and practice-based enquiry and recreations.