VISITORS to Bradford's National Media Museum will be able to make their own sound effects as part of an exhibition by the venue's new artists-in-residence.

Over the next seven weeks, Vicky Clarke and David Birchall, collectively known as Noise Orchestra, will be investigating what museum objects would sound like if they were turned into music.

The project, part of the museum's Light Fantastic: Adventures in the Science of Light exhibition, will conclude with a spectacular live light and sound show on October 31.

Running until November 1, Noise Orchestra: Play the Collections will bring an experimental sound laboratory inspired by 1920s Russian avant-garde artists to the museum.

In a sound laboratory, the pair will be making paper stencils based on shapes found in iconic objects from the museum’s National Collections of Photography, Television and Cinematography.

They will then run them through beams of light to create sounds using photosensitive theremins, electronic musical instruments in which the tone is generated by high-frequency oscillators, and the pitch controlled by the movement of the performer's hand.

Over the course of their residency, supported by funding from Arts Council England, the sounds will build into a "unique electronic symphony", culminating in a final performance when the duo will ‘play' the collections before a live audience.

The project draws on pioneering work by Russian sound artists Arseny Avraamov, Evgeny Sholpo, and Nikolai Voinov, who were experimenting with ‘graphical sounds’ nearly a century ago.

Noise Orchestra was inspired by the book Sound in Z, written by Andrey Smirnov, Professor of the Theremin Centre at Moscow State Conservatory, which charts the history of early experiments in Russian electronic music.

The two artists visited Professor Smirnov in Moscow as part of their research and recorded sounds from the city that will feature in their residency, also seeing numerous instruments and objects related to early Russian electronica.

Miss Clarke said: "The chance to visit Moscow to see Avraamov’s original graphical scores from the 1920s and play the noise machines was thrilling.

"We will be sampling these sonic fragments and weaving them into our soundscapes and visuals during the residency."

Mr Birchall added: "Getting to see and understand how amazing pieces of Soviet-era technology like the ANS synth functioned was great.

"The metro, trams, and buses all run off electricity in Moscow, so we made some amazing recordings of the hidden world of electromagnetism."

Visitors will be able to see Noise Orchestra at work in the gallery every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, and can make and play their own paper shapes every Saturday and Sunday during weekend workshops.

The workshops will run on a daily basis from October 24 to November 1 to coincide with half-term.