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The Expressive Body: Memory, Devotion, Desire (1400-1750), an exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum Contemplates sacred and secular bodies in painting and sculpture, and how our bodies as viewers interact with them, the show is a perfectly timed refresher on the importance of physicality in art.

"Two recent exhibitions by Icelander Jónsi and a current one by Oslo-based American Camille Norment reveal how innovative and impactful these two sound-based artists really are. While they certainly differ, they also have much in common. Both utilize sound - melodic and dissonant, subtle and emphatic - in immersive installations that respond to and also transform architectural spaces. Both are acclaimed musicians and composers; their experience as live performers no doubt influences their artworks. For both, sound in their work is music, or song, and also a primary material - they sculpt with sound. Both artists' works are also palpably soulful: they affect visitors sonically, visually, emotionally, and - very likely - spiritually too."

"Onda started talking to people who work in radio and learning about mysterious transmissions, coded messages from government broadcasts, and other unusual sounds that float through the radio waves. But nobody could decipher the recordings he'd been collecting."

"We had a joke in the studio that they were the best band members we've ever had," laughs Kev Bales when describing the recording of Be's One album. Bales may have spent the last 30 years drumming with the likes of Spiritualized, Soulsavers and Julian Cope, but the musicians he's referring to here are a different kind of buzz band altogether: to be precise, they're 40,000 bees, and their activity forms the basis of One, a transcendental drone symphony between man and bee that is surely one of the year's most beguiling offerings."

"In Hampi's Vijaya Vithala Temple, 500-year-old stone pillars miraculously produce the sounds of bells and percussion. Whether that's intentional or by chance remains a mystery."

"Sacred Spaces examines the crucial role sound has played in our spiritual and religious lives for thousands of years, and explores the sonic similarities between different religions, and different types of sacred space from across the world."

"In an interview in the October 1920 issue of The American Magazine, Edison confirmed that his scientific curiosity was intrigued by the nature of what happens to us after death. In his interview he posed the question, does our consciousness simply disappear as our bodies decompose or does some essence of our personality still linger in some form in this dimension of reality? Edison admitted that he didn't know, but the scientist in him wanted to find out whether that question could be answered. He told his interviewer that he was actively pursuing a device that would help him find that answer, saying, "I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us." For Edison, who took his inventions very seriously, this was not a simple throwaway remark, it was an announcement."

"The Music of the Plants project, created by a spiritual eco-community, investigates how humans can live more consciously and harmoniously with the natural environment."