Cobar Sound Chapel

The Cobar Sound Chapel is a permanent site-specific sound installation, located 1.5 km west of the town of Cobar, in central Western New South Wales, Australia.

Cobar Sound Chapel, exterior view looking west

It is a multi-disciplinary artwork created by composer and sound artist Georges Lentz in collaboration with architect Glenn Murcutt. The Cobar Sound Chapel consists of a five metre concrete cube with an oculus in its ceiling and with loudspeakers in its four walls, cast in situ inside a ten metre tall disused water tank from 1901, and with a pair of 5-by-5-metre entrance walls leading into the tank.[1][2][3]

Cobar Sound Chapel, interior view

The Cobar Sound Chapel is the new permanent home of Lentz's digital 24-hour surround-sound "String Quartet(s)" (2000–2022), a composition recorded over many years by Sydney string quartet The Noise. The music is inspired by the outback landscape and its starry night skies. Its vast sound art canvas spills out of the tank day and night, with the inside of the tank visible from outside through a pair of steel gates and dimly lit up at night.[4] Other influences of the artwork include aboriginal dot painting, the art and poetry of William Blake, the graffiti found on the tank's walls, as well as, in some parts, an exploration of AI-generated sound.[5] [6] The Cobar Sound Chapel also includes art in its blue corner windows, created by Cobar Indigenous artist Sharron Ohlsen.

According to composer Georges Lentz, the whole Cobar Sound Chapel is music, a giant "digital string quartet",[7] and there are relationships between the proportions of the building and rhythmic patterns found in the music.[8]

The Cobar Sound Chapel, twenty years in the making, officially opened on April 2, 2022.[9]

  • Interior, looking south
    Interior, looking south
  • Chapel at nightfall, looking south-east
    Chapel at nightfall, looking south-east
  • Western window
    Western window
  • Blake inscription in the north-eastern wall
    Blake inscription in the north-eastern wall
  • The first plate of Jerusalem by Blake, with text of inscription
    The first plate of Jerusalem by Blake, with text of inscription

References
  1. Quackenbush, Casey (5 January 2022). "In the Australian Outback, an Abandoned Water Tank Quenches the Soul". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  2. Farrelly, Elizabeth (1 October 2021). "Dust to dust: projects look to resurrect joy of shared music". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  3. "Serendipity in the Outback". Limelight. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  4. "Tank you for the Music". The Australian. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  5. "THE MUSIC". Cobar Sound Chapel. Retrieved 6 September 2022.
  6. "Soundscape in a weathered water tank rocks outback NSW". Australian Financial Review. 18 November 2021. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  7. "GEORGES LENTZ - composer". georgeslentz.com. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  8. "THE CHAPEL". Cobar Sound Chapel. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
  9. "Sunset serenade for Cobar Sound Chapel's official opening Cobar Sound – The Cobar Weekly". cobarweekly.com.au. Retrieved 18 April 2022.

31°29′18″S 145°48′41″E

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