Vintage sounds of dentistry at the British Dental Asssociation Museum

A few weeks ago I visited Birwood Dental Care to record the sounds of dental instruments in action. Last week, I expanded on this collection of historic dentistry sounds by visiting the British Dental Association Museum where Melanie Parker - who runs the education and outreach programme at the Museum - kindly demonstrated the use of many of the objects in the collection so that I could hear them. These recordings relate to comments made by interviewees earlier in the Sonic Wallpaper project, and will be used to animate the fantasies and imaginings which looking at the MoDA wallpaper collections inspired.



Ivory dentures and denture brush photographed by Felicity Ford with the kind permission of the BDA Museum

The objects in the BDA Museum are fascinating, ranging from dentures made from vulcanite and porcelain or ivory through to intricate sets of instruments and elaborate cases for tooth-picks. I was intrigued to learn about the relationships between privilege, status, and the care of one's teeth, and to see how the objects and rituals associated with dental health have evolved over the past couple of hundred years. There is much social history to be gleaned from exploring the collection at the BDA Museum. For instance, the ivory dentures photographed above have holes at the front in order to put pins into to then attach real human teeth. Such teeth were often taken from dead soldiers, and were known as ‘Waterloo teeth' because of the plundering of soldiers' bodies for teeth which took place following the Battle of Waterloo.

It will probably not surprise you to learn that I was principally interested in objects in the collection which might produce recordable sounds, such as a foot-treadle dental engine invented by James B Morrison in 1871. According to the BDA Museum's article on the history of dental drills "this foot operated machine based on the principles of the treadle sewing machine achieved 2000 rpm greatly increasing the rotation speed [of the spinning drill bit]." I don't know about you, but I find this an infinitely more soothing sound than that of our modern-day dentist's drills!

listen to ‘1871 treadle-operated dentist's drill’ on Audioboo

I made several other recordings of historic dental drills, including a 200-year-old hand drill, the operations of which I documented with both a contact microphone blu-tacked onto the dentures which were being drilled, and with a stereo shotgun microphone pointing at the table where Melanie was operating the drill.

listen to ‘Human tooth enamel and dentist's hand drill’ on Audioboo

The reason for this elaborate set-up is that when we are at the dentist's, we mostly hear the sounds of what happens as vibrations conducted through the bones in our head. Contact microphones work by picking up on vibrations of sound as they travel through matter, and I hoped that in recording the sounds of a dental drill using contact-microphones, I might be able to simulate the way that we hear dentistry in our own mouths. The results are appropriately scratchy and uncomfortable to listen to, and are unsurprisingly very different from the recordings I made using a stereo shotgun microphone.



De-accessioned dentures containing human teeth photographed by Felicity Ford with the kind permission of the BDA Museum

I think you can hear a lot more of the teeth and the drilling action in the contact microphone recording (above) and more of the rattly mechanism of the 200 year old Finzi hand drill in the stereo shotgun microphone recording (below).

listen to ‘Finzi hand drill drilling into de-accessioned dentures, containing human teeth’ on Audioboo

Finzi hand drill photographed by Felicity Ford with the kind permission of the BDA Museum

The sound of squeezing toothpaste out of a tube is almost completely inaudible, but in the past when dentifrice or toothpaste were supplied in tins or ceramic pots, the sounds associated with beginning and ending everyday tooth-brushing rituals were quite different from today.

listen to ‘Ceramic cherry toothpaste pot opening and closing’ on Audioboo

Cherry toothpaste pot photographed by Felicity Ford with the kind permission of the BDA Museum

listen to ‘Opening and closing a tin of Dentifrice’ on Audioboo

Dentifrice tin photographed by Felicity Ford with the kind permission of the BDA Museum

Another sound which I found especially interesting to compare to its contemporary counterpart is the sound of the wooden dispensary chair. This was a piece of apparatus designed to tilt a patient's head backwards so that the dentist could get at their teeth. It is creaky and wooden, and does not purr or beep like its electronic, modern-day equivalent! For both my recording of the chair at Birwood Dental Care and the BDA Museum, I used binaural microphones to record the motions of the chair. The reason for this is that I think one always hears this sound from the perspective of being a patient; of stepping up into the dentist's chair, sitting down on it, and being compelled by its movements to lie back. I've put the two recordings here side by side, so that you can compare them.

Both recordings were made with a set of SP-TFB-2 - Sound Professionals - Low Noise In-Ear Binaural Microphones connected to an Edirol R-09. I discovered these microphones through the wonderful Binaural Diaries of Ollie Hall.

listen to ‘Dispensary chair’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Dentist's chair’ on Audioboo

From the point of view of the Sonic Wallpaper project, these recordings are very interesting as the more modern dentist's chair undeniably has an association with converted old houses and thickly-overpainted textured wallpaper, whereas I have no memories or associations with the sounds of the dispensary chair, and therefore no way of visualising what kind of space it would originally have been used in. I imagine it is unlikely that there would have been wallpaper in the rooms in 1800s Britain where the treadle-operated foot drill or the dispensary chair were originally put to use, but I am not really sure. Any ideas, anyone?

My favourite recording from the BDA Museum adventure is definitely the contact-microphone recording, as I think it is visceral and uncomfortable in just the way that having a drill working away at your own your teeth can be. I am not sure yet how I will use this sound in a Sonic Wallpaper, but it relates to a wallpaper design which made some of my interview participants very uncomfortable, and so I feel it to be an appropriate sound for the project on several levels.

I'm also rather fond of this recording, which was made using an old set of dentures made of vulcanite with porcelain teeth, and a denture-cleaning brush. Melanie explained to me that for a long time a roll and flick motion was prescribed as the finest approach to cleaning your teeth, and as you can hear this produces a very particular rhythm.

listen to ‘Roll and flick movement’ on Audioboo

Many thanks to the BDA Museum for all your help recording these sounds of historic dental tools in action. Stay tuned to see how they shall be incorporated into the forthcoming Sonic Wallpaper designs.

ETA: Melanie Parker read this article and has the following comments on the links between dentistry and wallpaper:

I think the dental dispensary probably would have been rather stark because it was where the urban poor went for treatment. The foot drill, however, could be associated with wallpaper. As far as we can tell it would have been used by a wide-range of practitioners i.e. those working in dental dispensaries and dental hospitals treating the poor, pharmacists who also undertook dentistry or whom the dentist visited (some foot drills could be broken down and put in a wooden case – suitcase style – to be easily transported) and by high-class dentists who of course would have had very nice surgeries with plush wallpaper.

Thank You, Melanie.

on the Conservation of wallpapers

The conservation of vintage wallpapers lies rather outside my own areas of expertise, but I am very interested in maintenance tasks and also in the secret life of material things, therefore I learn from - and enjoy - observing how the important objects and materials at MoDA are maintained and conserved by the Staff there.

In selecting wallpapers to show to the public in the Sonic Wallpaper exhibition, it is essential that what we choose can withstand the pressures of being framed, travelled around, and exposed to light. Emma Shaw discussed with me last week how inherently ephemeral and fragile wallpaper is, and explained a bit about how samples must be prepared for display.

Some sections of wallpaper in the MoDA collection are still in rolls and need to be flattened. These include a design which features stone arches in a kind of faux architecture pattern, and a flocked paper.


Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University – photographed by Felicity Ford

The flocking process is apparently very involved, and results in many delicate fibres poking directly upwards from the paper. These fibres can be easily crushed or damaged, so it is important that if weights are applied to the surface, that this is done carefully and that something is done to protect the flocking.


Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University – photographed by Felicity Ford

To flatten the flocked wallpaper I am hoping to include in the Sonic Wallpaper project, Emma Shaw - who is the Preventative Conservation Officer at MoDA - laid 2 heavy sheets of blotting paper on top of it, and then a thinnish sheet of glass on top of them. The resulting "sandwich" now sits on a worktable in the conservation room, where Emma will periodically check up on it, until it is flat.


Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University – photographed by Felicity Ford

The other design will be flattened by applying through fine misting using a dahlia spray. The moisture will cause the fibres in the paper to relax, so that it will flatten out easily.


Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University – photographed by Felicity Ford

What I especially liked about watching Emma fix up the papers - and listening to her speak about the process - was the sense of methodical and necessary labour. These kinds of tasks are absolutely essential for the preservation of anything old or delicate, and experts all over the country right now are performing routine tasks of maintenance and conservation on things so that we may continue to enjoy and see them long into the future.

The sounds in the recording I have published here are of myself and Emma discussing the conservation work; of the hum of the air-conditioning in the conservation room; and of the materials involved in preserving the wallpaper. I like the recording for its quiet sense of industry, and for the way it evidences materials and tools and the preservation of the past.

Your Sonic Wallpapers; ideas from you

In this post I would like to respond to some of your wonderful comments on my own blog relating to this project, and also on some of the sound descriptions and images that you have added to the Sonic Wallpaper Pinterest board.

I love Mikal's ideas for a Sonic Wallpaper based on this Sanderson Woodland Ferns wallpaper.



Mikal wrote about the soft patter of rain dripping on leaves as a kind of aural equivalent for this delicate, silvery pattern.

There is something understated about the idea of this sound... it is a gentle sort of sound sonically resembling the muted palette of the paper's visual design. (Click here to see.)

Reading Mikal's words made me think about the sounds of water, and of this paper in the MoDA collection, which somehow suggests to me the gently humming drone of an aquarium.



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University – photographed by Felicity Ford

What sounds does it make you think of?

I also enjoyed Mikal's comment about the added tactile dimension of flock wallpaper (image can be seen here). Flocked, Sonic Wallpaper could be heard, touched and seen.



It was interesting to try and imagine in my mind's ear what a brassy and bold sonic equivalent to this flock paper might be, and I kept thinking of long, sustained, shifting chords played on brass instruments. What do you think?

Tom left an amazing comment on my blog, regarding the idea of meta Sonic Wallpaper; i.e. Sonic Wallpaper which references the intended use or functions of a room;

I was thinking about meta-sounds: e.g. for the kitchen, you’d have the kettle coming to the boil, something simmmering on the hob, the chopping of vegetables, the clanging of utensils. For the lounge the rustling of newspapers being turned (although, when was the last time I read news in the PAPERS? I get it all from the interent now), some music in the background. Sitting down into that sqeaky chair. At dusk, the swishing of curtains closing.

But trying to expand this into other rooms would perhaps not always work. Who would want to go into the smallest room and then you’d hear the noises of somebody “doing their business”? (this reminds me: when I lived in a shared house as a student, we taped Beavis & Butthead episodes onto cassette tapes and we wired a walkman with speakers into the light switch, so each time you switched on the light you heard “huhuhuhuh. hey beavis. huhhuhuh. cool. huhuhuh”. Our own sonic wallpaper!) And let’s not even begin pondering the bedroom noises.

On the other hand, you could turn things upside down by playing the sounds you’d associate with one room, in another room. A surrealist decoration!

This is interesting to me in many ways - firstly, who doesn't LOVE the domestic creativity involved in rewiring the lights?! Secondly, the idea of surrealist sonic home-decoration is most intriguing; what bizarre play could be had by exporting unexpected sounds from one context into another? For instance, what would it be like if opening kitchen cupboards resulted in the sound of a swarm of bees rushing across some carefully placed speakers, panning from left to right, as if moving? Or if you installed the sound of some pigs grunting deep into a dark corner of the house?



I also love the amusing way that Tom describes the intimacy of home spaces and refers to the kinds of sounds which we would rather keep private, or not hear, and certainly not record.

The sounds Tom has focussed on as being the sounds of domestic space are lovely in their details - a curtain closing; a newspaper page turning. And many visually designed wallpapers work like this, echoing details of domestic life in imagery. How many kitchen wallpapers have you seen for instance depicting cookware or food items?



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University – photographed by Felicity Ford

Why not create an audible equivalent? It might be confusing to distinguish between the recorded sound of the toaster and the actual sound of the toaster, but maybe this is part of the domestic play and creativity inherent in the idea of Sonic Wallpaper. Perhaps it will be possible in the future to buy Sonic Kitchen Wallpaper featuring - as Tom suggests - the sounds of slicing, dicing, bubbling, boiling, and perhaps the merry whistling of a contented chef. Or perhaps my own favourite kitchen sound - the climactic bubbling of the stove top espresso-maker.



Echoing the delicate soundscape of Mikal's imagined Sonic Wallpaper, Emmylou described how some of her favourite sounds involve rain;

I like the sound of rain; on tents or on my glass skylights, especially in the dark and warm. It also smells good so that is an added bonus.

Emmylou also raised some important points about how the context in which we hear sounds is a huge factor in how we experience them. Discussing a motorcyclist who travels around the Reading IDR very fast late at night, she mentions how the sound - in her words a good noise - induces a feeling of panic in her when she hears it in the context of the late night, dangerous driving. This reminds me of when I interviewed Motor cyclists at the H Cafe for my radio show about the A4074 road and found that the sound of one's engine is a source of pride and interest to bikers, but that in some other contexts - such as the one Emmylou describes - this same sound has different, darker connotations.



Mark found a very ornate wallpaper featuring monkeys.



...he elaborated on a correspondingly playful and exuberant accompanying soundscape;

sounds of a school playground at lunchtime, the rustling of beasts in the undergrowth, things falling to the pavement from the canopy above.

I like the specificity of lunchtime playground sound - a sound which often drifts across from schools at around midday, and which is filled with excitement, outrage, chattering and squealing. The idea of rustling and things falling to the pavement is also nice - especially if what is falling is fruit. The luscious depictions of fruit in Victorian wallpapers, for instance, have a grandeur and a silence which would be very much undermined by the unserious squelchy noises of a kiwi fruit splatting onto the pavement, or the dull thud of a melon splitting open.

I also enjoyed the brashly militaristic connotations of this other wallpaper chosen by Mark for the Sonic Wallpaper Pinterest board from this blog post on vintage, 1970s wallpaper samples;

before the war - the pipes and drums of the parade, cheering crowds, the buzz of anticipation, clip clop of hooves on cobblestones, orders barked and obeyed in unison, the sounds of control...

It's interesting to me that some of the sounds in that list seem slightly old-fashioned, like the horses' hooves on cobblestones. Perhaps this mirrors in some way the vintagey, old-timey feeling of the visual design of the paper...

Finally I want to thank Chris for this lovely description of the sounds of a rookery;

There is a rookery in the beech trees here. They have their routines but craw time about an hour before sunset when they return home in commuter uproar and later when they are settling down in drowsy conversation are both full of reassuring sound. They seem to like having humans around the place.

The word "craw" is so descriptive of the dark, throaty sounds a crow makes, don't you think?



What is especially interesting in Chris's description is the allusion to time. While printed paper wallpaper is static, and while its design does not change, sounds do shift, change and develop over time. Like the crows whose sounds have a distinctive sequence, so too does the rain on a tent; the march of a band; the buttering of a piece of bread; and so on. They are all sequences of events and this leads me to wonder what the timescale of Sonic Wallpaper could/should be. Should rolls be an hour, a week, a day, a month, a year or a minute long? I guess it depends on who is decorating.

Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed already to Sonic Wallpaper!
You can follow the project on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, and if you want to join the Pinterest board, leave a comment here and I will make it possible.

Sounds and subjectivity

Sonic Wallpaper explores wallpaper from auditory and social perspectives, asking what would it be like if we decorated our homes with sounds? The main concept is that while we talk about the way our rooms will look when we are consulting wallpaper sample books or looking at shade cards, we do not often talk about how they will sound. Extending the familiar rituals of browsing wallpapers and talking about likes/dislikes and the effects of the wallpapers into sound-pieces will hopefully invite people browsing the collection to imagine what it would be like if rolls of sound could be acquired for papering our living spaces with audible content, as well as with colours, pictures and textures.

To begin with, a selection of MoDA wallpaper samples will be presented to a series of invited guests, whose conversations about those samples will form the basis for a series of innovative audio works. Willing volunteers will be encouraged to imagine different wallpapers in their homes, and to think about the effects the wallpapers might have in different rooms. Their responses – “no, too loud,” “too bright,” “too busy,” “I love that, it’s very calm,” “I love the birds on this design,” etc. – will then be sensitively edited, and sounds will be collected and added in so that it seems as if the discussions relate to an imaginary, Sonic Wallpaper, as well as to the wallpapers in MoDA’s collection which can be seen. For an audio glimpse of this idea, please check out the Audioboo that I made, describing the project:



In the trailer I used recordings of:

applying wheatpaste to wallpaper and newspaper and smoothing paper - literal sonic wallpaper
Brenda's beach at Amroth
rain on our tent at Rannoch Moor
Sarah's chickens
a car alarm on our road - loud
The sounds of The Sonic Picnic at BEAM festival - busy
crickets and aeroplanes - calm
birds - the songthrush at Brenda's - nice birds
my harp - the sounds of fantasy
wheatpaste and wallpaper - textures

I had a lovely discussion with Mark when he got in from work last night and listened to the audio trailer for Sonic Wallpaper; I had previously been using the sound of water gushing out of a lock gate (to me, a lovely splooshy sound) at the stage where I say "I love that, it's really calm and relaxing" and Mark said it wasn't very "calm" to his ears. This got me thinking about how subjective our relationship to sounds is. Mark suggested that I instead pick out some of the cricket recordings I made when we walked along the A4074 at night-time together. I specifically remember that he was crashed out on the grass when I was making my cricket recordings, and so the sound of crickets has very mellow associations for him, which I found interesting in terms of his categorisation of that sound as a "calm, relaxing" sort of a sound.

Many exponents of John Cagean thought are against placing any kind of value judgements on sounds, because the idea that some sounds are more worthwhile or beautiful than others leads in many cases to a kind of dichotomy where what is generally categorised as "Music" is considered more worthwhile than what is generally categorised as "noise". The outcome of such dichotomies is that we miss the music of life itself, and in dismantling the hierarchy of sounds, Cage sought to elevate all sounds to the status of Music, thus celebrating everyday sounds.

In music, we should be satisfied with opening our ears. Everything can musically enter an ear open to all sounds! Not only the music we consider beautiful but also the music that is life itself…the more we discover that the noises of the outside world are musical, the more music there is… in the case of sound, whether the sound be loud or soft, flat or sharp, or whatever you like, that doesn’t constitute a sufficient motive for not opening ourselves up to what it is, as for any sound which may possibly occur.

John Cage, For the Birds, 1981

I love the ambition and the celebratory aspects of Cage's vision but I believe too that it is possible to celebrate everyday sounds whilst also exploring our subjective and personal feelings towards them. This is especially true in the context of domestic spaces which are shaped so deeply by our individual needs and tastes.

Many sounds which I love in other contexts might not be easy to live with as wallpaper... but then I feel there are also many sounds which I may not have considered, which might add amazing imaginative qualities to domestic spaces. Sonic Wallpaper is about discovering such sounds together and creatively playing with the idea of sounds in the home - as we play with moodboards and swatches for colour.

What would it be like to fill a room with the periodic sounds of whispers? echoes? bells? To paper the bathroom with the sounds of the beach in Miami? Or to paper the bedroom with the sounds of sighing trees or distant motorway traffic?

There is a subjectivity to domestic space - its close connection to our needs and feelings - which makes the study of sounds therein particularly potent. So I do not mind at all allowing taste to enter into the discussion, because I think that there are enough ways to celebrate sounds without having to pretend that we could live with all of them all of the time.

What sounds would you describe - personally - as being too loud? too busy? calm/relaxing? fantasy-inducing? especially textural? favourite birds? What sound would you like to hear when you wake first thing in your bed? What Sonic Wallpaper to wake up and hear?



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University – photographed by Felicity Ford

Sounds and subjectivity

Sonic Wallpaper explores wallpaper from auditory and social perspectives, asking what would it be like if we decorated our homes with sounds? The main concept is that while we talk about the way our rooms will look when we are consulting wallpaper sample books or looking at shade cards, we do not often talk about how they will sound. Extending the familiar rituals of browsing wallpapers and talking about likes/dislikes and the effects of the wallpapers into sound-pieces will hopefully invite people browsing the collection to imagine what it would be like if rolls of sound could be acquired for papering our living spaces with audible content, as well as with colours, pictures and textures.

To begin with, a selection of MoDA wallpaper samples will be presented to a series of invited guests, whose conversations about those samples will form the basis for a series of innovative audio works. Willing volunteers will be encouraged to imagine different wallpapers in their homes, and to think about the effects the wallpapers might have in different rooms. Their responses – “no, too loud,” “too bright,” “too busy,” “I love that, it’s very calm,” “I love the birds on this design,” etc. – will then be sensitively edited, and sounds will be collected and added in so that it seems as if the discussions relate to an imaginary, Sonic Wallpaper, as well as to the wallpapers in MoDA’s collection which can be seen. For an audio glimpse of this idea, please check out the Audioboo that I made, describing the project:



In the trailer I used recordings of:

applying wheatpaste to wallpaper and newspaper and smoothing paper - literal sonic wallpaper
Brenda's beach at Amroth
rain on our tent at Rannoch Moor
Sarah's chickens
a car alarm on our road - loud
The sounds of The Sonic Picnic at BEAM festival - busy
crickets and aeroplanes - calm
birds - the songthrush at Brenda's - nice birds
my harp - the sounds of fantasy
wheatpaste and wallpaper - textures

I had a lovely discussion with Mark when he got in from work last night and listened to the audio trailer for Sonic Wallpaper; I had previously been using the sound of water gushing out of a lock gate (to me, a lovely splooshy sound) at the stage where I say "I love that, it's really calm and relaxing" and Mark said it wasn't very "calm" to his ears. This got me thinking about how subjective our relationship to sounds is. Mark suggested that I instead pick out some of the cricket recordings I made when we walked along the A4074 at night-time together. I specifically remember that he was crashed out on the grass when I was making my cricket recordings, and so the sound of crickets has very mellow associations for him, which I found interesting in terms of his categorisation of that sound as a "calm, relaxing" sort of a sound.

Many exponents of John Cagean thought are against placing any kind of value judgements on sounds, because the idea that some sounds are more worthwhile or beautiful than others leads in many cases to a kind of dichotomy where what is generally categorised as "Music" is considered more worthwhile than what is generally categorised as "noise". The outcome of such dichotomies is that we miss the music of life itself, and in dismantling the hierarchy of sounds, Cage sought to elevate all sounds to the status of Music, thus celebrating everyday sounds.

In music, we should be satisfied with opening our ears. Everything can musically enter an ear open to all sounds! Not only the music we consider beautiful but also the music that is life itself…the more we discover that the noises of the outside world are musical, the more music there is… in the case of sound, whether the sound be loud or soft, flat or sharp, or whatever you like, that doesn’t constitute a sufficient motive for not opening ourselves up to what it is, as for any sound which may possibly occur.

John Cage, For the Birds, 1981

I love the ambition and the celebratory aspects of Cage's vision but I believe too that it is possible to celebrate everyday sounds whilst also exploring our subjective and personal feelings towards them. This is especially true in the context of domestic spaces which are shaped so deeply by our individual needs and tastes.

Many sounds which I love in other contexts might not be easy to live with as wallpaper... but then I feel there are also many sounds which I may not have considered, which might add amazing imaginative qualities to domestic spaces. Sonic Wallpaper is about discovering such sounds together and creatively playing with the idea of sounds in the home - as we play with moodboards and swatches for colour.

What would it be like to fill a room with the periodic sounds of whispers? echoes? bells? To paper the bathroom with the sounds of the beach in Miami? Or to paper the bedroom with the sounds of sighing trees or distant motorway traffic?

There is a subjectivity to domestic space - its close connection to our needs and feelings - which makes the study of sounds therein particularly potent. So I do not mind at all allowing taste to enter into the discussion, because I think that there are enough ways to celebrate sounds without having to pretend that we could live with all of them all of the time.

What sounds would you describe - personally - as being too loud? too busy? calm/relaxing? fantasy-inducing? especially textural? favourite birds? What sound would you like to hear when you wake first thing in your bed? What Sonic Wallpaper to wake up and hear?



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University – photographed by Felicity Ford

Sonic Wallpaper on Pinterest

I wonder how many of you are familiar with Pinterest? It is a very clever website which allows you to "pin" things from around the Internet onto virtual pin boards. You can create your own themed "boards" and Pinterest will cleverly arrange your "pins" into whatever themes/ideas you like.

I find Pinterest especially useful when I want to create a collection of images - such as that of historic Huntley and Palmer's biscuit ephemera - or when I want to make a kind of moodboard for a project I am working on.



Pinterest lends itself to moodboards and I am always inspired by the interior design ideas which show up on there; it is a giant showcase of the rooms people dream of making, and the spaces people dream of creating. Unsurprisingly, Wallpaper is regularly added to folks' Pinterest boards.

In developing the Sonic Wallpaper project, I have set up an experimental board dedicated to Sonic Wallpapers. Anyone can join in; you just need to leave a comment so I can invite you to the board. Then you can pin a photo of your favourite wallpaper from anywhere around the Internet (or a photo of your own wallpaper if you prefer) onto it, and add a few brief words about what sounds the wallpaper makes you think of, or what you would like to hear in a room papered with the wallpaper you have pinned.



To show you how:

Step 1. Once you are logged in to Pinterest, find an image of wallpaper which you would love to put in your home. Right click and select "copy image URL".



Step 2: In Pinterest, select Add Pin.





Step 3: Put the URL you have copied for the image into the box and click "Find Images".



Step 4: Add some sonic descriptive words, be as brief or as lengthy as you like. Think about what you would like to hear in a room with this kind of wallpaper, what music or sounds it makes you think of... be creative!



Step 5: See your Sonic Wallpaper added to a growing collection. I will create sound-pieces based on what gets added to the board. Happy Pinning!

Sonic Wallpaper

It is possible to buy every conceivable kind of visual distraction or design feature when putting a room together by sight, but we rarely consider the acoustics, sonic properties, or sound-qualities of the spaces that we live in. How would it be if one could design domestic spaces sonically, selecting soundscapes for spaces in the same ways that one picks out wallpaper designs?

Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

Some of you may remember the Sonic Wallpaper project* which I instigated a couple of years ago at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture. A group of artists then studying at Middlesex University - Martin Thompson, Lucia Chung, Simon James French and James Finn - participated in that project, and together we explored and developed sound pieces in response to MoDA's collection of wallpapers. We began by studying samples and discussing how the process and ritual of decorating living spaces might be translated into a sonic project; we then developed different project ideas and created a range of works.



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

Lucia Chung and Martin Thompson found the resonant frequencies of their living room and then played those frequencies back into the space as sine tones; James Finn had the lovely idea of producing a mobile kit for reproducing one's domestic space sonically in foreign environments; and I wrote a score which I pinned onto my bathroom mirror which instructed me to find the pitches within the noisy drone of the extractor fan in my bedsit shower room**.

That short series of workshops and study sessions was characterised by a wonderfully experimental approach. There was great willingness to explore amongst all participants and support from the staff for this unusual use of the wallpaper collection. However in the time that has passed, I have come to think that perhaps the most interesting thing about Sonic Wallpaper was the home-based creativity which emerged from mixing ideas from the world of Soundart with the everyday practice of home-decorating. Everyone participating in the workshop began to play in and experiment with domestic space in a very affirmative way in order to explore the ideas we discussed at MoDA. I am interested in how that process - of taking art ideas into domestic contexts - can be continued in this new chapter of the Sonic Wallpaper project. I am also interested in refining my own process of working with sounds, and in the idea of developing further Sonic Wallpapers which reflect some of the same wishes, desires, subjectivities and creativity which are inherent in how people decorate their home spaces.

I am not as interested in the resonant characteristics of spaces in a scientific way as much as I am in opening that secret door to the sound situation that you experience in a room.

- Alvin Lucier

Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

I am pleased to say that this project - to be undertaken over coming months at MoDA -will allow me to further develop these ideas. There will be interviews, there will be wallpaper, there will be sounds... there will be Sonic Wallpaper! I have the sense of being at the start of something wonderful, and have ordered some books to help me think and work through a new series of ideas. On Tuesday, I went to MoDA to begin shortlisting the papers that will be involved in this second round of the project.



There is nothing quite like actually going through the boxes of paper at MoDA and seeing wallpaper samples from the end of the 1800s right through to the 1970s and 80s to get you excited about wallpaper. Some papers seem so fantastical to modern tastes that it is almost impossible to imagine putting them onto a wall, let alone to imagine a sonic equivalent.



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

Other papers in the collection are instantly recognisable and provoke an immediate feeling of nostalgia and longing for the cherished environments of childhood; relatives whose homes we remember; or designs which we inherited when we moved somewhere.



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

I initially noted that we needed abstract, floral, figurative, textural, garish, neutral and dull papers, thinking that this would be a good starting point for a nice range covering the many eras represented by the collection and providing an excellent stimulus for discussion. However, I found my mind straying from this list as we looked, and thinking instead about desire and memory.



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

This 1930s paper seems exotic and glamorous to my eyes. It makes me think of movie sets. It relates less to the daily ritual of papering walls, and more to the whole aspirational/fantasy side to home decorating, and I love it for that.



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

Similarly, this design makes me think about Victorian illustrations as though you get caught up in Johnny Carrera's world just to look at it.

However, this last print - by Edward Bawden - is my favourite amongst all of the papers that we looked at.



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

I love the way the ink lies on the page, the colours and geometry of the cows against the curiously-shaped fields, and the crooked, romantic way in which it suggests the rambling English countryside.

A sonic equivalent could be created by placing tiny speakers spread out over the walls and periodically releasing the munching, mooing sounds of cattle through them. Such cows could be recorded from a near or close position, to recreate the playful scales evidenced in the design. Barley could be planted outside the room housing this particular Sonic Wallpaper and a window could be situated to allow the sounds of the wind ruffling through it to pour into the room. Especially creaky oak flooring could be fitted into the room in order to bring the woody sounds suggested by the inky trees in Bawden's design... Unfortunately for the MoDA project there is not enough time or money to floor such a room or plant/harvest a field of Barley outside its window etc., but dreaming about it and recording the sounds from similar things will celebrate and promote the possibilities of sonic home decorating - a concept to which I am firmly committed!

It is no surprise to me to discover that my favourite wallpaper from Tuesday's shortlisting process relates immediately to some of my favourite sounds. This just goes to show how personal tastes and subjectivity play an enormous role in how we think of wallpapers and home décor. I think it will be amazing to see how the individual visions, tastes and preferences of people who participate in this project will shape it.

I hope that everyone involved in the project will feel strongly drawn to certain papers in the collection, and that our discussions will develop into the rich basis for new sound works... but with papers like these, how can they not?



Wallpaper © Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University - photographed by Felicity Ford

*Clips from that project and the works that we created were included in the podcast series that I produced for Sound and Music's Cut & Splice Festival 2009 and can be heard here.

**The idea here was that this act would involve "redecorating" the unpleasing sound as I brushed my hair or did my make up. Singing and finding the pitches in the fan's noise became a pleasure which I looked forward to, thus sonically transforming an unpleasant acoustic area in the way that one might redecorate an ugly wall.

***Sarah Pink is a Professor of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, and her book Home Truths: gender, domestic objects and everyday life, is one of my favourite studies of domestic practices and objects.