There is a whale inside my synthesizer by Aya Metwalli


Date: 17 and 18 March 2023, Friday and Saturday
Time: 8pm–8.45pm
Venue: Container Bay, Rear Entrance of Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Free, by registation. 

In this performance, Aya Metwalli will be singing along with the LYRA-8; the unique organismic analogue synthesizer designed by Vlad Kreimer. “Organismic” means that LYRA uses some principles that lie in the base of living organisms. The way how LYRA’s modules interact between each other, and the behaviour of the instrument resembles a live conversation. It’s wrapped up in an intriguing and possibly believable story about its origins in the Soviet whale communication experiments of the 1960’s. In an attempt to find a common language, Metwalli will tune the machine to an Arabic maqam, unleash the sounds of the beast and react to it with her own raw voice. It is an improvisation where the artist performs an ego death live, exhibiting full surrender to the drawn-out drones, distorted whale calls, metallic harshness and dissonances of her synthesizer.