The Cobar Sound Chapel, which has proved a massive hit with grey nomads travelling in the New South Wales west, has just won a National Trust Heritage Award.
The innovative art installation was the brainchild of composer Georges Lentz.
The concept was a bold one.
A rusted, abandoned council water tank just outside Cobar was transformed into something completely new and amazing, and now a 24-hour long composition by Mr Lentz plays on a loop in a concrete room in the tank.
It is a single piece of string quartet music, which changes constantly.
The sound chapel is a unique Outback experience. PIC: Anthony Browell / Cobar Sound Chapel
Music plays inside the tank. PIC: Anthony Browell / Cobar Sound Chapel
Charles Sturt University engineering academic, Peter Thew, who heled bring the dream to reality said the sensation of stepping into the room was ‘all enveloping’.
“From the Outback heat, the cool concrete creates a cocoonlike atmosphere, enhanced by the live acoustic feel of the space and the quadrophonic music playing,” he said. “With the sky visible and the sun shining through a golden ‘lens’ in the roof creating a pattern on the textured wall, visitors can connect with something larger than themselves as they contemplate the music inspired by nature.”
The Cobar Sound Chapel won the ‘Adaptive Re-Use’ category of the annual heritage awards.
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Click here to find out more about the prize, and how to enter.
Members: If you wish to enter, please click here.
A great way of using that water tank up on the hill West of Cobar Caravan Park.
Last time we saw it while taking our dog on a regular morning walk it was covered with grafitti. The area around it was a rubbish dump with rusting car bodies etc.
The smell was appalling as were the flies due to numerous dead feral pig carcasses dumped nearby.
Well done tidying it up!