Made in Roath Blog: The Joy Orchestra, Heloise Godfrey-Talbot

Tusday 21 October 2014, 8pm, Milgi Warehouse

We gather in the Milgi warehouse at 8pm on Tuesday 21 October to see Heloise Godfrey-Talbot’s Joy Orchestra, an evening investigating the nature of communication, and aiming to create "dialogues" between people and objects. Heloise has been exploring human interactions with objects "designed to 'serve' us" for the last year, so in some ways this evening is a showcase of her work.

We start with a video of Heloise herself, in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, strolling around the exhibits and choosing an object to talk to. In the end she chooses a decorated plate with flowers and fruit – similar to many others in the cabinet.

“You’d fit right in at my mum’s house”.

The audience often laugh at Heloise’s comments to the plate, and indeed, her approach does feel unusual, and occasionally a little uncomfortable to watch. But why? In the next video, we are shown how strong relationships can form between people and objects. In “Instruments”, a conductor talks about their relationship with their orchestral baton, and a violinist talks about their violin.

After this, we see three videos featuring three autistic individuals, and the strong relationships they have with objects: a blower, a jigsaw, grass, tree and a chair. The first time, we watch the video on its own, and then it is repeated, this time in dialogue with a composition. The composers, Rowan Talbot, Dan-Wyn Jones and Benjamin Talbott, create a kind of conversation between the individuals, their objects, and the music.

The music really captures the intensity of the connection between person and object - a difficult feat for the composers to accomplish.

We close with the Sing! vocal group, a mixed choir who take a selection of everyday objects, and interpret them (non-verbally) with their voices. The results are striking – all “zip!”, “zow!”, hissing and shushing, etc. Eventually, the audience are invited to join in, interpreting a snorkel – great fun.