The Misfolding Project is a research collaboration between the Music department (Professor Nicholas Till), the School of Life Sciences (Professor Louise Serpell) and the award-winning music theatre ensemble, Electric Voice Theatre. Employing music, performance and digital arts to communicate developments in brain science and dementia research in imaginative ways, ‘Misfolding’ seeks to creatively communicate the highly complex biological processes that underpin Alzheimer’s disease. 

Last month, April 22-23, working under the Artistic Director of Electric Voice Theatre, Frances Lynch, Music students produced screen-based depictions of the science behind Misfolding which were exhibited at Phoenix Art Gallery as part of the British Neuroscience Association Festival of Neuroscience. Notes of hope were incorporated to reflect the scientific progress made and a sense of positivity for the future.

One visitor to the exhibition commented, ‘It was such an insightful performance, and I learned so much in such a short time. The music was disturbing and unsettling at times, but that was, I guess, a musical interpretation of the chaos and ravaging carnage that is happening to the cells during the ‘misfolding’. Another said, ‘It was incredible and so inspiring. An amazing way to convey the science’.

The Misfolding Project is jointly funded by the School of Life Sciences and the School of Media, Arts and Humanities.