Book Launch: Sound of Space

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This event marks the launch of The Routledge Companion to the Sound of Space (Routledge, 2024) by architect, composer and Bartlett Director of Fabrication and Design Collaboration, Emma-Kate Matthews; architect and Dean of Adelaide University, Prof Jane Burry; and architect and Foundation Director of Swinburne University of Technology’s Smart Cities Research Institute, Prof Mark Burry.

This edited volume explores conceptual and practical relationships between sound and space across disciplines, offering insights from technical, creative, cultural, political, philosophical, psychological, and physiological perspectives. Its chapters traverse spatial typologies—from reverberant buildings to intimate interiors, natural environments, and highly engineered spaces—revealing the many ways that sonic and spatial realms intersect. By bridging technology, philosophy, composition, and design, this volume encourages practitioners, scholars, and enthusiasts to adopt fresh perspectives and methodologies. Blending theory, practice, and reflection, it is an essential resource for anyone fascinated by the complex interplay of sound and space, from architecture and engineering to urban and product design.

Schedule 

13:00–15:00: Invisible Threads: A Workshop in Sound Puppetry with Nina Garthwaite (limited to 20 spaces) 

15:30–17:30: Four performances of sonic works in the Ground Floor Exhibition Space at The Bartlett School Architecture (limited to 30 spaces) 

18:00–21:00: Official Book Launch

The evening book launch will take the form of a series of short presentations from some of the authors, alongside an introduction to an exhibition in the Bartlett Kiosk followed by a short Q+A running from 18:00 onwards. The talks will be followed by a drinks reception and the opportunity to discuss with the editors in The Bartlett Exhibition space.

For full details of the workshop and performances of sonic works that will happen throughout the day see below for times, descriptions and options to book.

Workshop | Nina Garthwaite | 13:00 - 15:00 | G.03 - Fully Booked

Invisible Threads: A Workshop in Sound Puppetry

What does The Bartlett sound like? Using our ears as a portal, this two hour workshop will explore our collective inner experience of sound and space. Through listening, writing and shadow puppetry we will explore the webs of memory, sensation and emotion that inhabit the sounds around us. The workshop will culminate in a temporary artwork that will be projected back into the space.

No prior experience necessary, just a willingness to play, make and share. Limited to 20 spaces. 
 

Performances of Sonic Works | 15:30 - 17:30 | G.01 - Fully Booked

Join us for a series of performances of sonic works from invited guests in exhibition area at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Limited to 30 spaces. 

Water-drought patterns, Eleni-Ira Panourgia

Water-drought patterns presents a speculative sonic process that shapes and transforms environmental sounds in response to drought scenarios. Transitions between current and future conditions in landscapes and ecosystems are explored through the fictional dimensions of sounds of organisms, elements and states of matter. Airborne, underwater and surface vibrations are processed to express forces, flows and competing elements from multiple listening perspectives in space. The sound work delves into the microcosm of environmental sounds to construct more complex textures and rhythms revealing plant and animal reactions to drought as they adapt, struggle or behave differently. Drought effects are experienced from the perspective of non-human bodies navigating change across temporal and spatial scales.

Eleni-Ira Panourgia is a sound and visual artist, and researcher. Her work focuses on the development of new forms of expression and creative methods that combine sound, objects, spaces and environments. She explores the potential of such complex morphologies within artistic, design, social and ecological processes. Eleni-Ira completed a PhD in Art at the University of Edinburgh as a Scholar of the Onassis Foundation. She is co-founder and managing editor of the journal Airea: Arts and Interdisciplinary Research. Eleni-Ira is currently a Teaching and Research Fellow at Gustave Eiffel University.

Concrete Dreams of Sound, Gascia Ouzounian and Gerard Gormley

What would music be if it were made of architecture? Concrete Dreams of Sound explores the possibilities of a music that is born of, and dwells in, architecture. While many musical works explore the acoustic properties of architectural spaces, Concrete Dreams of Sound asks what music could be if it not only reflected architecture but was returned to it; made a part of it; belonged to it. Recorded and produced over a period of several months in 2023, Concrete Dreams of Sound entailed a detailed vibrational and acoustic exploration of The Barbican, an iconic Brutalist complex in London that embeds the utopian spirit of postwar modernism in architecture. This process entailed making sonic and vibrational recordings using a variety of instruments and sensors that capture airborne vibrations (sounds, echoes, and resonances in air), structure-borne vibrations (recording vibrations through walls, floors and surfaces, including of the Barbican’s famous patented concrete), underwater recordings in ponds and water features around the complex, as well as sounds and acoustic reflections in locations throughout the site: stairwells, hallways, alleyways, elevator shafts, basements, and more. These sounds were later returned and played back into those spaces, creating layers of architectural resonance and acoustic response. This process reveals sound as it materialises in relation to architecture, and reveals architectural spaces and materials as they are made perceptible in sound. A violin, which appears throughout the album, is used not as a musical instrument in the traditional sense, but rather as a device for activating architectural responses and mapping out spaces. We hear the micro-textures of building materials as they mediate sound and also receive it; we hear the concreteness of concrete and the glassiness of glass. As such, Concrete Dreams of Sound is music of and for architecture. It imagines architecture both as a listening device and as a listener: as something to listen to, and with, and as a thing that listens. 

Gascia Ouzounian is a sonic theorist whose work explores sound in relation to space, architecture, urbanism, and violence. She is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, where she leads the project Sonorous Cities: Towards as Sonic Urbanism (soncities.org). Ouzounian is the author of Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts (MIT Press 2021), and she has contributed articles to leading journals of music, visual art, and architecture. Recent projects include Scoring the City, which takes inspiration from the graphic score and other unconventional notations in experimental music to develop new modes of ‘urban scoring’ (scoring.city); and Acoustic Cities: London & Beirut, which brought together ten artists in creating works that explore the sonic, social, and spatial conditions of two cities.

Gerard Gormley is a composer and sound artist whose work investigates noise-based microsound within electroacoustic music, audiovisual installations, and film. A lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University, Gormley holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast. His internationally showcased works include presentations at the Cannes Film Festival, NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, and Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium.

A performance from Gerriet Sharma 

Dr Gerriet K. Sharma is a composer, sound artist, and artistic researcher in spatial practices. Within the past 20 years he was deeply involved in the spatialisation of electroacoustic and instrumental compositions in Ambisonics and Wave-Field Synthesis. Furthermore, he was extensively concerned with textural transformation processes into 3D-sound sculptures and the development of the IKO and 393 beam-forming-loudspeakers in cooperation with the IEM Graz. 2017/18 he was appointed Edgard Varèse professor at the electronic studio of the TU Berlin. Sculptural works for the icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO) and loudspeaker hemisphere were presented amongst others at Darmstädter Summer Courses, Music Biennale Zagreb, Kontakte Festival Berlin, Wiener Festwochen, and Atonal Festival Berlin.

A performance from Angela McArthur 

Dr Angela McArthur is an artist, academic and interdisciplinary advocate. She leads a Master's programme in spatial sound in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. She has undertaken many artist residencies and interdisciplinary collaborations, including a five month residency working with the IKO loudspeaker at the Institut für Elektronische Musik (IEM) in Graz. She initiated the first UK tour of IKO works in 2019. Her work centres around the practice and theorisation of aesthetics in sound, underrepresented (including other-than-human) onto-epistemologies, and ocean environments. She champions diversity in access and representation. She has worked in studio, live and location environments, and founded Soundstack, an annual series of workshops, masterclasses and concerts about spatial sound aesthetics.

More Information

• Learn more about The Routledge Companion to the Sound of Space

Image: Sound of Space Book Cover by Dr Finneas Catling