Turn It Up: The power of music
Science + Industry Museum, Manchester 
21 October 2022 – 21 May 2023

A project with All Things Studio
Exhibition build by SetWorks
Graphic production by Omni
Special playground exhibit by Amigo & Amigo
Sound deisgn by Ay-pe

Read more and book tickets on the museum website

Press articles
The Guardian, 24 October 2022
Secret Manchester, 24 October 2022

Photography © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, Drew Forsyth, David Sudlow Designers

Turn It Up: The power of music is a multi-sensory exhibition exploring our relationship with music and how it affects our bodies and minds. It considers why certain music can make us feel different emotions and how it might influence what we buy, as well as how it can be used to boost health and wellbeing and improve sleep. The first half of the exhibition looks at the innate human urge to create music and where our ingenuity and technological innovations have led. The second half is more reflective, thinking about the effect music has on us as individuals.

We worked closely with the exhibition designers All Things Studio and the museum’s curatorial team to design a visually playful and sonically immersive exhibition. The graphic design took inspiration from György Ligeti’s experimental electronic composition Artikulation and its graphic score created by Rainer Wehinger, using colourful blobs and squiggles to reflect changes in timbre and pitch. These  visual characteristics were redeployed in 2- and 3-dimensions to define pace and space through the exhibition. The design uses a limited palette of environmentally sustainable and responsibly sourced materials comprising cardboard tubes, papers and coloured wood fibre panels. The typographic design is wrapped up in Ekarv’s principles of writing text for visitors in multi-sensory environments.