Curious Replicas is part hair-styling station, part voice-styling station, part a theatrical space of sensory, vocal invention. Curious Replicas invites you to style your voice like hair. You - the user and temporary artist - experiment with adding frizz, curl, shine, and many other stylings to their voices, and adjust their voice’s gender (on a sliding scale, of course!) and ‘body’. As you voice, your own sounds are sent back to you, styled according to how you adjust the knobs. The bronze mirror shimmers in response to your voice, the seat vibrates you in direct response to your voice, and an innovative ultrasound array creates a windy response to your changing voice that dances across the palm of your hand and you can feel it - it is sound that literally touches. The design of the experience makes you feel like you are in private space, though the exhibition is public; you can listen to yourself on phone receivers or on speakers, adjusting to your own need for privacy and your own shyness about your transforming voice. Made for public space. Sometimes accompanied by a wig-stylist, animating artist to help the public be comfortable (role developed by the incredible Harold Offeh). Showed at Chelsea Theatre public area, London; British Art Show 8 Fringe, Southampton (outside City Art Gallery and Southampton Central Library) for long durations. Over its life, the piece reached about 3300 direct users, and many more listeners. Direct users stayed using the machine for up to one hour, with many return visits, especially by families. Curious Replicas was made for, and belongs to the Tract and Touch Trust and is part of the Voice-Styling research-creation strand.

Artistic direction: Yvon Bonenfant. Coding, digitals, sound, light, vibration: Kingsley Ash. Ultrasound vibration and vibration consultant: Prof. Peter Glynne-Jones. Design/maker of object: Other Fabrications. Collaborating wig-styling artist: Harold Offeh. Funders: Arts Council England; Chelsea Theatre; British Art Show 8 Fringe Southampton; University of Winchester.