The Choral Forest

The Choral Forest, 2012, is a permanent public artwork commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital as their donor recognition artwork to acknowledge the £15 million donation from Aditya and Megha Mittal for the new Mittal Children’s Centre at the Hospital. This public artwork is situated at the heart of the new Morgan Stanley Clinical Building, and is a collaboration between artist Shona Illingworth and artist Henna Nadeem. It was conceived as a sound and image poem whereby an interplay between the visual rhythms and colour patterns of a geometric abstraction of a forest and a complex, multi-layered and richly textured audio composition of bird calls and ambient sounds, transport the audience across continents. The work comprises a wall painting by Nadeem, which is sound activated by Illingworth, using cutting edge audio technology to create a multi-channel synchronised sound composition that emanates from and moves across, the entire surface of the wall. The project has involved working closely with FeONIC Technology, who specialise in the design and development of magnetostrictive audio products, to create a system using DSP capabilities to create a multichannel audio installation that is both embedded within the architecture and responsive to the changing acoustic environment of the hospital.