11:00   Welcome and acknowledgements

11:15 – 11:30   A microbiomal meditation (Jol Thoms)

11:30 – 13:00   Introductions, reading some texts together to get deeper into the concept of Third Listening, Hidden Third Partners, and Yeasting as Microbiome Practice (Brandon LaBelle and Ayşe Köklü) 

13:00 – 14:00      Picnic*

14:00 – 14:30 (Yeast) Starter Ceremony

14:30 – 15:15 Listening Session with Briefing/Prompting (Ayşe Köklü and Brandon LaBelle) 

15:15 – 16:00 Informal discussions about the prompts with the group 

*Light refreshments will be supplied. Please bring a picnic lunch with you/some edibles to share with others. NB. The research garden is open to all to drop in over lunch (1-2pm). No need to sign up - just turn up (with your lunch)! 

Ayşe Köklü is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and educator based in London.  Spanning sound recordings, text, DIY musical instruments, experimental learning events and somatic practices, her work revolves around the relationship between sound, ecology, place-making and loss. Ayşe is currently pursuing a part-time PhD in Arts&Learning Programme at Goldsmiths, developing collaborative and arts based pedagogies for and with the endangered Turkish whistled language. Ayşe holds a BA (Hons) in Graphic Communication Design from Central Saint Martins (2013), a Graduate Diploma in Linguistics from Birkbeck (2016), and an MA in Art Practice & Learning from Goldsmiths (2020). She currently teaches on the Creative Unions programme at CSM and has previously taught on the Communication Pathway at the UAL Foundation (2022–2025). From 2015 to 2020, she designed and led a critical and creative research methods course for the CSM Study Abroad Programme. https://www.aysekoklu.info  

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist working with sound culture, voice, listening and questions of agency. Guided by situated and collaborative methodologies, he develops artistic projects and performances within a range of international contexts, mostly working in public and with others. From gestures of intimacy and listening to critical festivity and experimental pedagogy, his practice aligns itself with a politics and poetics of radical hospitality. This leads to performative installations, poetic theater, storytelling, and research actions aimed at forms of experimental community making, as well as extra-institutional initiatives, including The Listening Biennial and Academy which he currently directs. He is also currently working as a research fellow at the National Hellenic Research Foundation for the ERC project MUTE (Soundscapes of Trauma: Music, Sound, and the Ethics of Witnessing). https://brandonlabelle.net  

Jol Thoms (b. Toronto) is an artist, sound designer, and researcher based in London, UK. His transdisciplinary fieldwork and critical audio/visual practices interrogate the West's troubled relationships with Nature, Technology, and Cosmos by signalling beyond the purely measurable and quantifiable, and by thinking, feeling, and sensing with more-than-human worlds. His compositions, lecture-performances, and educational experimentations emerge from site-based fieldwork in remote ‘landscape-laboratories’ situated at the forefront and intersection of experimental physics and environmental stewardship where cosmic and planetary bodies become entangled as vast posthuman sensing arrays. He is currently Studio Lecturer in Goldsmiths’ MA Art & Ecology and MA Art & Politics. He is also a member of the Centre for Art & Ecology. https://jolthoms.com 

Location: 

Art Research Garden, 41-43 Lewisham Way*, New Cross, London, SE14 6QD. Location map / what3words: /////dogs.poster.even 

*access to the garden is via a wooden gate on Parkfield Road. 

Accessibility: 

• Accessible toilets are available at Goldsmiths in the Richard Hoggart building, opposite the Art Research Garden (within 3 minutes reach). 

• There is step-free access to the Art Research Garden. 

• If weather is inclement we will make use of the indoor facilities. 

• Please wear comfortable clothes and sturdy shoes. 

• The garden is close to a supermarket and numerous cafes. 

• Please bring a pillow or a sheet to sit on in the garden. 

• There is a 3-seater-bench, but no chairs in the garden. 

Please contact us should you need a chair or would like to discuss your accessibility requirements.

Travel: 

• Public Transport: The following buses stop close to Goldsmiths: 21, 36, 53, 136, 171, 172, 177, 225, 321, 343, 436 and 453. 

• Goldsmiths is five minutes’ walk from both New Cross and New Cross Gate railway stations.

12:00 - 12:15 Welcome | Alice Eldridge

12:15 - 13:00 Talk | Jono Gilmurray 

13:00 - 13:45 Lunch*

13:45 - 14:30 Talk | Ben Kelly/About Face 

14:30 - 15:00 Talk | Bethan Prosser 

15:00 - 15:15 Tea break (Included)

15:15 - 17:00 Workshop | Ann Light 

17:00 - 17:15 Close 

*Please bring your own.

Jono Gilmurray 

Ecological Sound Art in Theory and Practice

Over the last few decades, the growing global concern around multiple ecological crises has been reflected by an explosion in engagement with them across every area of our arts and culture; and sound art is no exception, with an increasing number of artists using sound and listening as a medium for engagement with contemporary ecological issues, forming a growing contemporary movement of ‘ecological sound art’.

This talk will provide a comprehensive introduction to this important new field of artistic practice, with the central aim of highlighting the ways in which sound and listening represent a particularly powerful medium through which we might explore our perceptions of, relationships with, and responses to, contemporary ecological crises.

To help guide this exploration, key aspects of sound studies will be combined with the analytical tools of ecocriticism to conduct some ecocritical ‘listenings’ to examples of contemporary ecological sound art, with the aim of uncovering some of the core philosophies, techniques and methodologies involved. Through this, a fundamental accord will be revealed between some of the core principles of contemporary ecological theory, and the ways in which we experience and relate to sound art; demonstrating that ecological sound art represents not only an important new area of sound arts practice, but a uniquely powerful modern ecological art form.

Ben Kelly/About Face

The Nature-Culture-Climate-Continuum and Ecosocial Justice.

Ben will be speaking about The Nature-Culture-Climate-Continuum  – his performance-as-research methodology that explores the evocative representation of the dialogical human and non-human mechanisms attributed to our climate crisis. This method is used to design and perform sonos-centric transdisciplinary projects that challenge ecosocial justice through inclusive co-creation, and to cultivate eco-reflexivity in audiences through an ecomusic interstice - a unique space-time event such as music performance, installation or exhibition, to evocatively present the interactive elements of our global ecology: nature, culture and the climate. These are offered as intervening spaces for audience self-reflection on indigenous rights, consumerist deforestation and habitual choices that contribute to destruction of the climate.

During this talk Ben will aim to facilitate a new ecomusic interstice through ‘spectacular representations’ of his previous work alongside explaining how Bourriard’s relational aesthetics (2002) underpins this experimental approach.

Bethan Prosser

The Ecomusicology Project

The Ecomusicology Project is a newly formed partnership comprising sound artists, musicians, community practitioners, horticulturists and makers, based at Stanmer Organics in Brighton. The collective is made up of Lost Property, The Rose Hill, Sound Art Brighton, At the Coach House and Brighton & Hove Music for Connection. We aim to create an open inclusive space for ecomusical experimentation, education and interaction. Ecomusicology is the convergence of music, culture and the environment at the intersection of nonhuman and human sound worlds, and our project is based around creating a flexible, multi-use environment for workshops, exhibitions, performances and installations on a short and long term basis.

Ann Light 

Creative Evaluation Methods for Artistic Practice and Cultural Transformation (with lessons learned from CreaTures) 

Evaluation is often undertaken with a heavy heart. Is this because the purpose is usually to meet others’ agendas? This workshop explores the role of evaluation when it is not just performed to report back to funders. 

As part of the workshop, I will ask: 

• How can evaluation be made to serve creative interests?  

• How can it be incorporated into creative work?  

• And how can it be designed to respond to the special qualities that creative practice brings?  

I will give examples from my years doing community-based creative research before offering the new CreaTures Framework as a tool for reflection and the basis for thinking about our needs with regard to assessment. 

Dr. Jono Gilmurray is the Course Leader of the Electronic Music Production and Music & Sound Production degree courses at BIMM University Bristol. He is a sound artist, writer and researcher, whose work focuses upon how sound and listening can help us to explore, understand and relate to ecological issues. Recent activities include taking a group of students to the COP28 UN Climate Conference in Dubai to showcase works of climate-themed music and sound art, and the co-creation with local young people of a multichannel sound art installation on themes of slavery, migrancy and climate change for the National Trust at Tyntesfield. He holds a PhD in Ecological Sound Art from the University of the Arts London, and is currently writing a book on the subject. https://arts-london.academia.edu/JonoGilmurray

Artistically known as Aboutface, Ben Kelly is a transdisciplinary artist, multi-instrumentalist and workshop facilitator specialising in intercultural collaboration with vulnerable groups, performing, exhibiting sonos-centric projects dedicated to the unveiling of the ecosocial mechanisms attributed to our accelerating, climate crisis.

Ben has previously developed conceptualised creative works alongside charities, NGO’s and activist groups such as: Help Migrants UK, One Resilient Earth; Zan Zendegi Azadi - an anonymous Iranian collective; In Place of War; The Alfred Wegener Institute – a centre for polar and marine research; London Wildlife Trust; Forest Peoples Programme, Size of Wales and Extinction Rebellion, to produce multi-disciplinary works that combine field-recording, improvised multi-instrumentation, fine-art and bio-interactivity to create immersive sound-worlds that challenge matters of ecojustice. Ben has published music with worldwide recognition on innovative labels such as AD 93, Dark Matters and his own Coordinates imprint, airing on such shows as Radio 1 Essential Mix, Elizabeth Alker (BBC radio 2), Tom Ravenscroft  (6 music) and Gilles Peterson (BBC & WWFM).

Ben has a BA in Sound Arts and Design at UAL and a MMuS in Sonic Art at Goldsmiths, and is currently preparing for a PhD which investigates how collaborative research with indigenous forest communities can mitigate anthropogenic ecocide. www.aboutfacemusik.co.uk . https://soundcloud.com/aboutfacemusik . https://aboutface.bandcamp.com/

Ann Light is Professor of Design and Creative Technology at the University of Sussex, UK, and Professor of Interaction Design, Social Change and Sustainability at Malmö University, Sweden.

Her work addresses themes of social and ecological justice; the co-making of futures and the politics of design, with a focus on grassroots activism. She brings a background in arts, humanities, AI, and human-computer interaction to bear on innovation in social process, culture, and wellbeing. She is currently investigating how creative practices can promote transformations to sustainability. http://lightstuff.co.uk/ann-light/

Bethan Prosser is a listening practitioner and researcher who is part of The Ecomusicology Project collective. Through an ESRC postdoctoral research fellowship at Brighton University, Bethan is extending her PhD methodology: participatory listening research. Participatory listening research is a way of listening with others to the environment to generate new knowledge and discoveries, whilst embracing different listening experiences, practices and positionalities. Bethan’s research predominantly focuses on urban settings – using listening to explore resident’s experiences of seaside gentrification on the South Coast. Through working with Brighton & Hove Music for Connection and The Ecomusicology Project, she has been applying these methods to green spaces. She will introduce The Ecomusicology Project and share reflections from delivering Interactive Listening Walks and participatory soundmapping workshops on the plot. https://ecomusicology.org.uk/ . https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/bethan-prosser-2 . https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-bethan-prosser-50642b145/ . Twitter/X: @bethanmathiasp .

• The nearest toilet facilities are situated on the same floor. 

• The nearest cafés are located in the IDS building, and in Dhaba square directly opposite.

• The Digital Humanities Lab provides accessible entry for disabled users via lifts in the Silverstone Building.

• The nearest disabled toilet is accessible on the ground floor. 

• Guide dogs on leads are permitted in the Digital Humanities Lab.

• Drinks with lids are permitted in the Lab.

14:00 Welcome Aki Pasoulas

14:05 - 15:00 Talk/discussion Rob Mackay

15:00 - 16:00 Tea break Please use the Wagon Stop Canteen or the Mess Deck in the dockyard for food and drink Further information.

16:00 - 17:00 Concert Multi-channel diffusion of Rob Mackay’s soundworks. MAAST

c.17:00 Close 

Rob Mackay

Composing Place

Rob will talk about his preoccupation with place in his work over the past 20 years. Incorporating a range of approaches including field recording, improvisation, and live electronics, his increasingly interdisciplinary approach has seen him collaborate with musicians, theatre makers, dancers, poets, and more recently scientists. His outputs include works for instruments and voices, fixed-media, live electronics, and audiovisual installations. 

Biography

Rob Mackay is a Senior Lecturer in Composition at Newcastle University. He is an award-winning composer, sound artist and performer. Recent projects have moved towards a cross-disciplinary approach, including geology, soundscape ecology, theatre, audiovisual installation work, and human-computer interaction. His work has been performed in 18 countries (including several performances on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 1 and Radio France), and a number of his pieces have received international awards (Bourges (1997 and 2001), EAR (1999), La Muse en Circuit (2007)). He has held composer residencies at Slovak Radio (Bratislava), La Muse en Circuit (Paris), the Tyrone Guthrie Arts Centre (Ireland), Habitación del Ruido (Mexico City), and CMMAS (Morelia). He is currently the Chair of UKISC (UK and Ireland Soundscape Community), an affiliate of the WFAE (World Forum for Acoustic Ecology). 

https://robmackay.net

11:00 - 11:20 Arrival Coffee and tea served 

11:20 - 11:30 Welcome John Drever 

11:30 - 12:30 Presentation Annie Goh | Echoes of Elsewhere 

12:30 - 13:15 Lunch Selection of sandwiches + cakes served (vegan/gluten free option available) 

13:15 - 14:15 Presentation Marie Thompson | Tinnitus as Secret 

14:15 - 14:45 Break Cold drinks and fruit served 

14:45 - 15:45 Presentation Sandra Kazlauskaite | Sound, Gender and Space in Post-Soviet Lithuania 

15:45 - 16:45 Networking Drinks and conversation (Alcohol free options) 

Annie Goh 

Echoes of Elsewhere 

In this talk I will present research into archaeoacoustics or acoustic archaeology. I will propose thinking about the echo as a material-semiotic figuration of sonic knowledge production. I will give an overview of my research trip to Chavín de Huantar, Peru and its signification for thinking echo within a feminist and decolonial framework. 

Sandra Kazlauskaite 

Sound, Gender and Space in Post-Soviet Lithuania 

In this performative lecture/workshop, I will reflect on my ongoing sonic arts and research project "Post-Soviet Gendered Soundscapes" (2022-present). Through field recordings, graphic scores, and audiovisual archiving, I explore how prescribed gender frames and roles persist as audible phenomena within the everyday soundscapes of contemporary Lithuanian society. 

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, how have the ways gender is voiced and sounded shifted? During this immersive intervention, we will listen openly and deeply to the hierarchies, exclusions, undermining tones, and other forms of sonic violence that manifest in homes, workplaces, and physical and virtual social/political spaces. My analysis attunes to everything from heightened silences to raised voices, muzak to bodily noises - attending to the often-uncomfortable frequencies through which societal structures get perpetuated. 

However, this is not just an exercise in sonic critique. The session will also consider whether soundscape practice itself can serve as an act of radical care - a way of actively listening with and together interdependent communities of agency and resistance. Through methods like social listening, sound walking, and collaborative sound-making, what affective and political potential might we discover resonating in our everyday auditory environments? 

Throughout the session, I will immerse attendees in examples of my sonic scores and field recordings while prompting reflection on how listening can uncover the gendered social scripts we inhabit. 

Marie Thompson 

Tinnitus as Secret 

Sharing work from the AHRC project Tinnitus, Auditory Knowledge and the Arts, this session will sketch out an account of tinnitus as secret. I seek to highlight the factors that produce tinnitus as a secret, particularly within the sonic arts, where tinnitus is both prevalent and rarely acknowledged as such. Acknowledging that secrets complicate the boundary between the private and the public – in that secrets carry the threat and promise of sharing – and drawing upon reflections from a series of online workshops using creative activities and arts methods to express experiences of tinnitus, we will collectively examine the possibilities and pitfalls of ‘de-privatising’ tinnitus. Finally, we will consider the wider ethical and methodological implications for researchers engaging with other ‘secret’ conditions, experiences and phenomena 

Dr Annie Goh is an artist and researcher working primarily with sound, space, electronic media and generative processes within their social and cultural contexts. She completed her CHASE/AHRC-funded PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2019 on archaeoacoustics and sonic knowledge production, where she was also a Stuart Hall Foundation PhD Fellow. She co-curated the discourse program of CTM Festival Berlin 2013-2016. She is co-founder of the Sonic Cyberfeminisms project since 2015 with Dr Marie Thompson and an editorial member of Feminist Review since 2022. She is Course Leader of BA Sound Arts at LCC, UAL and a member of CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice). 

www.anniegoh.net 

Dr Sandra Kazlauskaite is a Lithuanian-born sound artist, researcher and DJ working across the disciplines of sound and music performance, installation, as well as theory-led projects in auditory culture. Her work explores the relationship between sound, gender, and space, questioning the concepts of silence/silencing, gendered soundscapes as well as the production of everyday spaces. Her works, embedded in the method of social listening, combine graphic scores, field recording, experimental electronic music, sound installation, and mixing, creating compositions and performances that reflect on the socio-political dynamics of everyday life. Arriving from her personal post-soviet context, she incorporates large-scale abstract scoring to process collective trauma and memory. Sandra’s works have been exhibited and performed in the UK, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Germany, and the United States. Her research work has been published by MIT Press, Bloomsbury Press and VDA Press. http://sandra.unmute.co.uk https://staff.lincoln.ac.uk/503f5469-cf38-4b0f-874b-a1a77bfe38d8 IG: @sandybeachsounds 

Dr Marie Thompson is Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at The Open University. She is the author of Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism (Bloomsbury, 2017). From 2020-2024 She was the project lead of the AHRC project Tinnitus, Auditory Knowledge and the Arts, which explored how the arts can enrich understandings of tinnitus and the diverse ways it affects those who hear it. Thompson is also a founding member (with Annie Goh) of Sonic Cyberfeminisms, a project that uses the legacies and histories of cyberfeminism to critically and creatively interrogate the relationships between gender, technology and auditory culture. 

Applications are now being accepted. 

You are invited to apply via our application form

Please note the following before you apply:

• The deadline for applications is: 30 June 2024.

• The field trip is open to 8 CHASE Studentship Holders (you do not need a sound/music specialism to apply).*

• The field trip will include being outdoors, and walking across uneven ground for extended time periods. 

• Accommodation (hostel), meals and transport on the island is inclusive. 

• Travel to and from Shetland (Lerwick) should be individually organised and reimbursed via the "CHASE Support funding application form." 

• Possible travel options: NorthLink Ferries: Aberdeen to Lerwick: 5pm: 27 Aug - 7:30am: 28 Aug. Lerwick to Aberdeen: 7pm: 01 Sept - 7am: 02 Sept. (Or your preferred means of transport to Lerwick, to arrive 28 Aug and leave 01 Sept.)

• Please do not make travel arrangements unless you have been accepted on the field trip.

• All applicants will receive a response by 07 July 2024.

*Scholars (institutionally affiliated or independent) may apply for any vacant places via the above application form. Please note, transport to and from Lerwick is exclusive of this offer. (Please self-finance or contact your home institution for financial support options.)

14:00 Welcome & information (Alice Eldridge).

14:15 - 15:05 Decolonising listening (Jamie Perera) (50 mins).

15:15 - 16:15 Activities in parallel:

     Listen Alfresco           (Kersten Glandien) (>35 mins)

      Pond listening*   (Al Strachan) (open-ended)

      Creative transductions**   (Chris Sciacca) (open-ended)

      Networking

16:15 - 16:45 Tea, biscuits & networking (Bethan Prosser) 

16:45 - 17:00 Group reflection

*please bring a pair of headphones if you have them, **and a recording device. This can be your phone!

Jamie Perera

Decolonising listening

Decolonising Listening is a workshop that looks at how colonialism may have warped our relationship with the world, in particular with regards to listening, and seeks to redress the balance in a series of light provocations and group exercises. How can we understand the ways we have been conditioned to other-ise with our ears, and how can exploring different ways of sonic being help us reconnect to ourselves as nature?

Jamie Perera is an Asian mixed heritage composer, sound artist and producer from East London. His work is inspired by transformation in the Anthropocene, with themes that juxtapose nature, people, places and timescales. He combines electronic production and contemporary orchestration with field recordings, data, and video. Through music, performances, installations and workshops he explores grief, radical deconstruction, re-imagining and reclamation.

Website

Kirsten Glanien

Listen Alfresco 

a focused listening and shared audio experience in natural surroundings.

Listening to recorded sound through headphones in natural surroundings can be a very special experience, the sound in our ears blending with the atmosphere we feel, see, touch and smell. Listening with others in a shared environment becomes a surprising communal encounter.

A programme of particular sound works that blend with the special listening conditions on site, offers a variety of sonic impressions.

Access via mp3 players and personal headphones, allows each listener to choose from a number of preselected pieces, listen in their own time and experience the pieces in their own way. Material: headphones, mp3 players, programme handouts

Kersten Glandien is an author, scholar, curator and producer specializing in the fields of Sound Arts, Aesthetics and Experimental Music. She has published extensively in these disciplines, curated sound art events and experimental concerts, and produced radio programmes. She is the co-founder and artistic director of Sound Art Brighton.

Website

Al Strachan

Pond listening 

A listening station at one of the Ecomusicology Project ponds.

The Ecomusicology Project team have been using hydrophones to listen to the oldest established pond on the site for a couple of years now, and invite you to drop by the pond and explore the clicks, gurgles and other sounds that are typically occurring down there in springtime. Recordings of the pond have been used in musical performances at TEP, and we hope the listening session will lead to more discussions about how we can interact with these sounds. Please note: The listening station will have 4 outputs for headphones. We will provide enough headphones; however if you are able to bring your own pair that would be appreciated. 

As a musician Al Strachan plays a set up that often involves brass instruments, electronics and field recordings. He programmes Safehouse - Brighton’s long-running musical improvisation night; puts on events with Lost Property Arts Collective; and is actively involved with Sound Art Brighton and the Ecomusicology Project. 

Chris Sciacca

Creative transductions 

Are there any rules we should follow with recording equipment if we want to create sonic images of “nature”? Field recording is the creative practice of sharing sonic perspectives beyond the simple act of pointing a microphone and pressing record. Experimental microphone placement can broaden this practice as an interactive process: listening and sounding through the many objects and materials in the environment. 

Participants will join Chris on the plots at Stanmer Park to experiment with unique sonic transductions through such objects and materials, to create non-traditional images that redefine the ideas of what a “soundscape” is. Any level of experience with field recording is welcome from beginner to expert. 

Participants should bring:

• a pair of headphones; 

• a portable recording device (field recorder, or phone);

• a microphone, if you have one. (A variety will be provided to experiment with, including, “cheap” mono microphones, a variety of lo-fi piezo microphones, and a pair of Apple headphones turned into a stereo microphone.) 

Chris Sciacca is an American sound artist, musician and practice-based researcher specializing in sonic ethnography and soundscape composition based in Brighton, UK. His recordings have been featured on NTS Radio’s Field Recording: Infinite Mixtape series and Resonance Extra, BBC3, BBC6 and exhibited at the Fort Process Festival in Newhaven, UK. His works explore the theme of space, place, and cultural identity through immersive and detailed location recordings. His current post-graduate research at the University of Greenwich explores using e-waste to document the soundscapes of waste collection and processing across the southern UK.

Website

Sound Art Brighton is an independent artist-led organisation dedicated to the support, production and dissemination of Sound Art. Founded in 2019 as a Brighton-based initiative, it focuses on producing work, organising events and network with similar organisations in the UK and mainland Europe. SAB embraces the hybridity sound art offers by reaching out to practitioners and facilitators who bring sound together with visual arts, architecture, sculpture, installation, radiophonic art, music, projection art, environmental and situative practices.

Website

Networking:

Bethan will lead the networking session from 4:15pm. 

Dr Bethan Prosser is a listening practitioner and researcher who brings 20 years professional experience of community engagement. During her doctoral project, Bethan developed her unique methodology - Participatory Listening Research – that uses listening methods to understand people’s relationships to changing places. She is extending this approach through an ESRC-funded post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Brighton. She works with Brighton & Hove Music for Connection, the city’s specialist community music organisation, running Interactive Listening Walks and is a member of The Ecomusicology Collective. 

Website

Accessibility:

• The plot is nestled amongst a community of creative and sustainable organisations within the setting of Stanmer Park. Please wear sturdy shoes and wear weather appropriate clothing.

• A number of chairs will be provided. You are welcome to bring your own cushion.

• Refreshments will be provided in the late afternoon. Do feel free to bring your own lunch and mug for tea.

• The plot does not have a toilet. The nearest access to toilets and hand washing facilities is at the One Garden Brighton garden centre (open 9:30-5pm), approximately 6 minutes walk away.

To let us know your requirements, contact us via email. 

Travel:

• Click to view walking directions from Stanmer Village to the Ecomusicology plot.

• The 78 bus runs to Stanmer Village from Brighton. Buses 25, 28,29, 29A & 29B all run from Brighton to the entrance of Stanmer Park. Plan your journey with the buses.co.uk website. 

• Trains frequently travel from Brighton to Falmer. Walking from the station takes approximately 30 minutes; it takes 6 minutes to cycle. The Ecomusicology Plot is found due south of Stanmer Organics. View directions on Google maps. 

14:00 Welcome & introductions

14:05 - 15:00 ·······  —— (2025) (c.30’00”) Konstantinos Damianakis

15:00 - 15:15 Break*

15:15 - 15:45 Beneath the Surface (2023) (11’42”’) Aki Pasoulas 

15:45 - 16:00 Break*

16:00 - 16:50 Setting Foot on the Dreams of Euclid (2023-25) (20’33”) John Levack Drever

16:50 - 17:00 Closing remarks & goodbyes

*For refreshments please use the Wagon Stop Canteen in the dockyard, opposite the venue (open 10am-4pm) or feel free to bring a picnic. 

·······  —— (2025) (c.30’00”) Konstantinos Damianakis

Only you and I are now listening. There isn’t anybody else.
A creaking of invisible crystals.
Of glacial florets calving.

This composition (in the making) is emerging from the act of translating into English the poem Man Overboard by the Greek writer Ersi Sotiropoulos (published in Greek by Patakis Publishers in 2018). Following her mother’s death in 2016, she wrote the poem while in the Arctic Circle, capturing her sympathetic resonance with the land, triggered by the sound of glacial calving – the detachment of a large mass of ice from another.

The sonic assemblage emerges from the text as it tends to vibrate beyond the page. This is considered simultaneously as a side-effect of translation and as a new creative act of repeating the poem differently. The material present in ······· —— primarily includes extracts from SubPhonics’ recorded improvisations where Man Overboard was read as a text score. There are also a few hydrophonic experiments with ice, and recordings from the Arctic Circle provided by the poet.

Acknowledgements:

I am profoundly thankful to Ersi for the captivating conversations and her generosity with time and the material presented here. Additionally, I express my gratitude to everyone contributing to this collective process.      

   
The image consists of two photos taken by Ersi Sotiropoulos, and imitates the design of the book cover by Paris Mexis through the inversion of the landscape and the high horizon that splits the text. The sound material includes performances by Viviana Caro (Buchla Easel), Konstantinos Damianakis (Borderlands, Make Noise modular system), Toby Edwards (Uno Synthesizer), Antony Frisbey (Eurorack system), Timo (Octatrack sampler), and Yodashe (Wasp synthesizer).

Links: 

Subphonics: www.subphonics.com

Man Overboard:  https://www.patakis.gr/books/9789601681634-anthropos-sti-thalassa/

Konstantinos Damianakis is a musician whose work involves various per-mutations of sound, text, and code, interested in the more-than-human potentialities of listening. He is currently examining machine listening through sonic fiction in his Music PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London. The output of his practice research includes the electroacoustic composition, The Spiral (2023), responding to Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, and an article on composing with machine listening based on speculative malacology published in Organised Sound, titled Spiralling Out of a Shell: Fictioning more-than-machine listening (2024). He has also designed interactive music systems based on Calvino’s fiction for the award-winning Variations and Theme on Invisible Cities (2022 John Halford Prize). He is an active member of the Subphonics music and sound art collective, experimenting with non-hierarchical collaborative processes that are often presented as free improvisation concerts, interactive installations, or a quarterly radio show at Resonance Extra. Furthermore, he recently participated in the Studio Richter Mahr’s (SRM) Free and Equal Vol. 2, commemorating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights while raising funds for Médecins Sans Frontières by (re)composing and performing along with pianist and singer Carolina Cury in a music concert at the London Coliseum and a forthcoming album.  

Beneath the Surface (2023) (11’42”) Aki Pasoulas

Beneath the Surface (8-channel version) is an immersive soundwork originally composed for the Wave Field Synthesis system (192 loudspeakers) using hydrophone recordings made in a creek at Hamshill Fleet, Isle of Grain. 

All sounds are produced by water beetles, waterside plants, gas bubbles and distant industrial activity. Water beetles make sound by rubbing parts of their bodies together. Aquatic plants generate bubbles of oxygen through photosynthesis and produce additional sounds as their submerged stalks collide and rub against each other in the current. The low-frequency rumbling of industrial activity, part of the original soundscape, adds another sonic layer. Together, these elements form an extraordinary underwater orchestra.

Beneath the Surface was kindly commissioned by A+E Lab. 

Material of these recordings has been reworked in two group installations with the Liminal Spaces interdisciplinary research group, funded by Creative Estuary.

Dr Aki Pasoulas is an electroacoustic composer, working mostly with recorded, environmental and processed sound. He is currently Reader at the University of Kent, and Director of Music & Audio Arts Sound Theatre (MAAST). He was the Principal Investigator of the research project ‘Sonic Palimpsest’, exploring our experience of heritage sites through sound; and the Co-Investigator of the project ‘Liminal Spaces’ researching remote areas by uncovering their hidden voices and activities.

Aki’s interest in sound's subjective experience was deepened through his research on time perception involving all senses, revealing the holistic nature of the sound perception process. His research interests include acousmatic music, time perception in relation to sound, psychoacoustics, spatial sound, and soundscape ecology. His scholarly and music works are published by KPM/EMI, ICMA, Sonos Localia, Stolen Mirror, Gruenrekorder, HELMCA, Pinpoint Scotland, Cambridge and Oxford University Press, and his compositions are performed worldwide.

Website.

Setting Foot on the Dreams of Euclid (2023-25) (20’23”) John Levack Drever

A creative response through sound to the life and work of Tim Robinson — cartographer, artist, painter, mathematician, writer, polymath (known in the 1960s London art scene as Timothy Drever).

This project was sparked by the discovery of a large, abandoned painting titled Dreams of Euclid 3, found at the back of Tim’s studio in Roundstone, Connemara. First exhibited in a solo show at the Lisson Gallery, London in 1968, the work is a meticulously crafted geometric composition rendered in acrylic paint. Over the decades, however, it has suffered severe damage from high tide flooding from the Atlantic. Yet through the patina and erosion, a new kind of beauty is unfolding — one that reveals a more elemental, timeworn version of the original work, echoing Tim’s lifelong affinity with nature, pattern, and existence.

The piece interweaves sonic textures generated from a VCS4 synthesiser — a rare instrument built in the same year the painting was completed — with field recordings of the encroaching tidewater against the windows and felt through the very walls, interspersed with hydrophone recordings made at Roundstone Quay on the day following his ashes were scattered, together with those of his partner Máiréad.

Framing this evolving soundscape is a shared intimate moment: Tim reenacting in the air the embodied gesture of painting a vast circle in a single breath — an act that speaks to the confluence of geometry, movement, and presence that marked his way of being. This work becomes both meditation and homage — a resonant portrait of a mind shaped by pattern, place, and a lifelong critical inquiry into the natural world.

Setting Foot on the Dreams of Euclid is John’s third response to visual art, following earlier projects created in dialogue with and presented alongside the paintings of Sandra Blow and Shuji Okada.

John Levack Drever’s practice spans music, acoustics, audiology, soundscape studies, ambiance, urban planning, and sound art—integrating these within the transdisciplinary field of acoustic ecology. His projects explore place, listening, and hearing through practice-based research, often in collaboration with other artists. He first presented the concept of auraldiversity in Harvard University in 2015 and is currently critically examining its implications for spatial perception. John co-founded the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community in 1998, affiliated with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and chaired Sound Practice, the first conference on soundscapes in the UK in 2001. Following his PhD at Dartington College of Arts, John led Sounding Dartmoor, a participatory soundscape study. His commissions include works for GRM, Paris (1999); Shiga National Museum, Japan (2012); Trumpington Park Primary School, Cambridge (2021–22); and IMMA, Dublin (2023). Awards include two Music Nova Competition prizes (Prague, 1996 & 1997) and the Worst Sound category in the Sound of the Year Awards (2020). Drever has held visiting academic posts in Japan, Denmark, and Hong Kong, and was Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2023, he presented Tuner of the World for BBC Radio 3, shortlisted for the Prix Europa. 

Accessibility:

• Access to the historic docklands is along roads and pathways. The venue has both stairs and ramp entrance/exits.

• Seating is provided at the venue. Please let us know if you need accessible access and we will reserve you a chair/space.

• Refreshments should not be consumed in the venue, however there is a cafe/canteen across the way from the venue. We will have breaks after performances, and the space can be entered and left at any time.

• Toilets are available at the gallery and on the site.

• To plan your visit to the historic dockyards visit the site accessibility web page.

• To let us know your requirements, contact us via email. 

Travel:

• Trains travel to Chatham station from London Bridge, London Victoria and London St Pancras International (time: 40”-1’15”) National Rail Journey Planner.

• The no. 1, 2, 100, 116 buses will take you to the Chatham Historic Docklands c. every 10 minutes. (Arriva Information line: 0344 800 4411)

• Map of area to Chatham and University Campus area, including venue.