I have just finished designing The Sonic Garden, a month long public sound sculpture for Worlds End Place in Chelsea. Its grown into quite a big project, with the main aim being to create a project that residents will really appreciate and be involved in. The starting point was a flower lamp I designed for The Merry Widow: I saw that the bulb could be replaced with a speaker, and planted amongst real plants.

There are a series of pod shaped planters, which these speaker flowers emerge from like organ pipes. I am working for the first time with the reknowned fibreglass/ sculpture fabricator, Stephen Pyle, and once again with composer Will Turner-Duffin and writer/librettist Jane Buckler who are creating audio landscapes and poetry from the creative input of residents groups, the general public and the local school. The sound sculpture has been commissioned by Chelseas Arts Service as part of the InTransit festival and the London Festival of Architecture. It is supported by Chelsea Theatre and Worlds End Nurseries. The launch is at 6.30pm 22nd June, when there will also be live art performances in the piazza on the theme of guerilla gardening programmed by Chelsea Theatre. Please come with your trowels and a plant! I am collecting garden themed sounds for the installation, so if anyone wants to send me something before the 22nd June, do email me

Production work is about to start for The Merry Widow for Scottish Opera (Go Round 2008-2009 season). I am working again with both the director-choreographer, Clare Whistler and lighting designer, Simon Mills. I have designed an abstract, curvelinear set, in blacks and golds, which emphasises the movement, music and psychological properties of this piece. The costumes span from fin-de-siecle elegance to c.1914 avant garde Paris couture. We start rehearsing in August. The Merry Widow tours from September.

Earlier this year A Special Exhibition presented The Listening Shell at the V&A Museum. I worked with engineers David Smith (DuPont Corian) and Joel Irons (Audio Gold), to refine the experience of sitting inside the shell. We succeeded in the twin objectives of pushing back the speaker further inside the shell at the same time as incorporating a hi-definition mono speaker (there is a description of the earlier process of developing the shell in the accompanying catalogue). I collaborated once again with carpet manufacturers Ryalux, who sponsored the exhibit with a superb shagpile carpet dyed in V&A Chinese Violet. As at the South Bank Centre in 2004, there was usually a small queue, and groups like to take photos of each other, some posting them on Flickr type sites. The Listening Shell has now been taken to a beautiful sculpture garden in Sussex, in preparation for some R&D by musician Will Turner-Duffin.

A legacy of this exhibit is the online project The Listening Shell Songbook . This which grew from an open call, via the Sonic Arts Network, to commission composers to write soundscapes. Having originally envisaged 3 pieces, I ended up programming 11. The online programme comprises of works originally written for the Listening Shell at the V&A, and new works written for the online songbook by a growing list of Listening Shell Songbook composers. It is currently in its second edition. www.myspace.com/listeningshell

I am working on the next stage of this unique project, which concentrates on technical development and programming possibilities. For further information, please contact listeningshell@dodynash.com