The Texture of Air is a public art and heritage project honouring two London hospitals at a moment of historic transition. Eastman Dental Hospital and the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital both left their historic homes on Grays Inn Road and reopened in a new shared facility in October 2019.

Inspired by medical imaging techniques, the artists sought to faithfully record the stories and memories of staff and patients and to reveal the sonic and architectural profiles of the buildings. The collected media come together in an audio-visual work and online archive, which along with three sculptural tributes is permanently installed at the new hospital on Huntley Street, WC1E. The Texture of Air was funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund, UCLH Arts and Heritage, and Med-el. The project won the Sound Walk September award in 2020.

As composer, I created pieces inspired by objects and architectural features described by staff and patients, either creating simple algorithmic processes based on the object's 'data' - the movement qualities of a rocking horse, the dimensions of a china box, the motoric rhythm of a lathe or the fall of water droplets into a grand fountain - then played by a disklavier grand piano and augmented by string parts.

Other pieces were inspired by the acoustic properties of different hospital spaces and performed in situ by a wind trio. In the following piece, the melodic beep of medical equipment heard in an underground lab space is extended by the wind trio into an art deco stairwell at the Eastman Dental Hospital. The binaural recording is created by me wearing the microphones and moving from the bottom to the top of the staircase via the ancient hospital lift.

Credits
Laura Mitchison: Oral historian & Artist at On The Record
Olivia Bellas: Creative Producer at ScreenDeep
Nicole Robson: Composer & Associate Producer