The story, as told by an elegantly dressed curator at the beginning of the demonstration of the Ethometric Mueseum, is that Ray Lee was able to salvage and repair the last remaining examples of ethometric instruments in the world, many of which were destroyed in a catastrophic fire in Dalston. The exact usage and purpose of these exquisitely built instruments is uncertain and the human subject may have interacted with them in a variety of different ways. Luckily any radiation from this bizarre collection of instruments, made in an age of metal switches and Bakelite knobs, is not considered harmful.

Ray Lee has managed not only to resurrect these instruments and bring them together into a possibly complete collection in the basement of the Museum of the History of Science where they are flanked by Marconi’s radio and Einstein’s famous blackboard, but also to use their sonic capabilities to produce a sound installation that is a quite unique experience.

After the erudite introduction on the known history of the ethometric instruments Ray Lee, dressed in dark suit and white gloves, moves like a silent MC around the collection activating and adjusting one instrument after another until the whole basement fills with a soundscape that builds from relative harmonic simplicity into a complexity of tones and timbres rhythmically falling and rising reaching the eeriness of a three-dimensional piece by Steve Reich. As Lee continues to move around the instruments the sound constantly modulates so Reich gives way to a period of esoteric science fiction, to itself be replaced by murmurings and flutterings and finally to die with a dimming red light and a last burbling hum.

Anyone familiar with Ray Lee’s Siren, first shown in a aircraft hanger outside Oxford and which has since toured worldwide, will know the intense theatricality of his sound installations. What he has achieved with these ethometric instruments has the same magic but both more precise, more discreet and more ethereal. The performances continue until the end of the month at which time the Ethometric Museum will no doubt sink back into scientific obscurity. Time is short.