Scientific sound show attracts crowds at Bournemouth's Arts by the Sea Festival (From Bournemouth Echo)

Scientific sound show attracts crowds at Bournemouth's Arts by the Sea Festival

4:25pm Tuesday 16th October 2012 in News By Arron Hendy

EXPERIENCE: Ray Lee who plays Professor Lee in a work called The Ethometric Museum

A SCIENTIFIC sound and movement show attracted a full house during Bournemouth’s Arts by the Sea Festival.

The Ethometric Museum experience used a variety of instruments in a production designed to use electricity to make visitors happy.

And Kerry Curtis, spokesman for the festival, said the show was a sell out throughout a series of performances over two days. She said visitors were all smiling as they left the event, held at the Bournemouth Natural Science Society building in Christchurch Road.

“It went really well and everyone was just really blown away,” she said.

“The word most people uttered when they came out was ‘amazing’.”

The production is a piece of performance art in which visitors were treated to a dramatic start with a “doctor” giving health and safety information before the “professor”, the sound artist Ray Lee, entered the room.

To add to the drama he silently went around the room starting all the instruments in a combination of theatre and science.

Kerry Curtis said one of the key “drivers” for the festival is to stimulate the economy.

She said: “The arts and the creative industries associated with them are the third largest contributor to UK GDP and growing.

“They are one of the success stories of the UK economy.”

She said the inaugural Bournemouth Arts by the Sea Festival in 2011 generated around £3million for the local economy and this year’s festival looks set to at least equal that.

“Brighton Festival creates an extra £20 million annually to the local economy with a much more generous financial injection from the local authority than Arts Bournemouth receives,” she added.