Sonographies
2-4 & 9-11 February 2024
12-5pm
Concealed in near silence, the sound installation Sonographies explores hidden and intimate spaces of experience. An eight-channel composition sounds physically in the gallery space but above the range of human hearing. Unstable and sensitive to movements of the body, an alternate acoustic landscape is revealed to individual listeners wearing wireless headphones created specially for the work. Sonographies is an invitation to dwell in sound, to probe space with your listening, and to notice how your body meets with sound and space. The composition slowly unfolds as though a journey through imagined, interconnected rooms. Drawing on themes of interior and domestic space, miniature and barely audible sounds of the home expand into the gallery space as immersive, sonic landscapes comprising field recordings, instrumental tones, and synthesised layers.
Sonographies is the culmination of a creative residency at no format gallery and is inextricably site-specific, incorporating the acoustic and architectural features of the space. The installation has been developed in different iterative versions as part of PhD research examining the experience of listening to spatial sound art. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to participate in the research by completing a short online survey following their encounter with the work.
Sonographies is created by Nicole Robson with curatorial support from Eva Martinez and is supervised by Prof. Andrew McPherson and Prof. Nick Bryan-Kinns. The work is supported by the EPSRC grant EP/L01632X/1 (Centre for Doctoral Training in Media and Arts Technology at Queen Mary University of London) and by the Royal Academy of Engineering under the Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships scheme.
Nicole Robson (b. 1987) is a sound artist and PhD researcher in Media and Arts Technology at Queen Mary University of London. Her work, presented internationally, includes installation art, musical composition, performance, and academic publications. She is interested in the performative and relational character of listening, how sound is co-produced by our bodily and perceptual activities, and research methods for describing lived experience. Nicole’s practice includes public art commissions (NHS, Mayor of London, Museum of London), which draw together oral histories and site-specific, community-led musical composition; harnessing sounding and listening as a means of social action. As a classically trained cellist and multi-instrumentalist, Nicole is an experienced performer and has played at concert halls and music festivals around the world, on television programmes such as Later... with Jools Holland, and live for BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, and 6 Music.