Lunchtime Talks are a series of informal presentations at Watershed's Pervasive Media Studio. They normally take place at 13:00 on a Friday, are free and are open to everybody who is interested in what they do. Come along, bring a sandwich, and get to know more about the Studio community, current and up-coming projects, or residents' work.

Choral composer and performance maker Jenny Bell has recently become a Studio resident. During this lunchtime talk, she will tell you a bit about her current compositional R&D, which is focused on political and social inclusion. Jenny started with the question: if the country were a choir, what would it look and sound like? Probably not much like government! So, Jenny is doing a little experiment at the upcoming No Boundaries conference: she is going to make a choir out of the entire symposium, to see what it sounds like.

You won't need to be able to sing to be a part of this choir. You can speak, or you can say nothing, or you can sing. You might have a terrible voice. Good! You might be quietly extraordinary at singing. Great ! You might just want to say Bollocks. That's fine too!

Jenny wants to create the choral version of what radically different voices sound like when they work together. A lot of her research is into participation, new power structures and the impact of joint speech. The outcome is going to be a hacked, Punk mode of vocal composition, generated out of real speech. She is working with a developer to create a piece of software that will enable her to group different tones, textures and cadences in words and sentences, so she can capture voices doing what they do naturally, and frame them so that they are beautiful. Jenny wants to hear what people really think and make music out of it.

The Pervasive Media Studio is located within the Watershed building. Let us know if you'd like a tour and we'll be happy to show you around. Send an email to admin@pmstudio.co.uk

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