Wellcome Collection: This is a Voice

What is a voice? As powerful as it is intangible, the human voice can be felt, physically and emotionally, yet we can neither see nor touch it. This is a Voice illuminates with exhibits as diverse as the voice itself what it is to speak, sing, and listen, how our voices define us, and just what it is that makes them so special.

The exhibition begins silently, in an anechoic chamber - a room which absorbs all sound. The five sections that follow each take a different aspect of the voice and guide us, with medical illustrations, live performance, and objects from ethnographic collections, through this beguiling world. Dawn Chorus, an installation by Marcus Coates, explores what human vocalisation does and does not share with birdsong, and Meredith Monk's Dolmen Music challenges its performers to create stories with their voices using no words at all.

A voice reveals a lot about its speaker, but what happens when that speaker is hidden, or was never there at all? Manuscripts by fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich recording her experiences of the voice of God will be on show alongside modern-day psychiatric and philosophical accounts. Finally, the exhibition asks a question: what does the future hold? Will synthesised voices take over, or will the human voice forever have such an inimitable grasp on our imagination?