In an increasingly distracted world, our relationships with our lived environments have become shallow and inattentive.
Sonic Attunements uses sound as a medium for reconnection, exploring new modes of empathy and awareness through acoustic experiences.
Through three works – collective listening and walking, sonic encounters from overlooked everyday objects, and tactile encounters through intimate vibrations – listening is positioned as a form of design practice. The project invites collective critical thinking around how we listen, sense, and engage with the environments we live in but rarely hear.
It began with the humble practice of listening: going to different places to record the sounds around me, in an effort to understand them. Through Pauline Oliveros' idea of deep listening, I sought to cultivate a more mindful and empathetic relationship with sound.
Slowly, this became the practice of soundwalking : listening and walking, at any place, and at any time. I walked alone, then with others, cataloguing what we heard or felt onto paper and clay. Together, these form a visual archive across two books.
My attention then turned to the smaller sounds around us, the ones we tend to dismiss or not notice. From this, Intimate Acoustics was created: a platform of everyday objects that come alive when one leans in close.
Across the platform, three proximity sensors set each found object into motion, and each one speaks in its own voice - soft, mechanical, strange. The work asks one to pause, to come closer, and to listen to the subtle sounds of the environments we live in but rarely hear.
Afterwards, this thinking extended to the body. Sound is vibration, and we move through it every second of every day. How can sound be experienced beyond hearing it?
Vibrational Ground sits with this question. Four platforms, each tuned to a different environment: natural, urban, kinetic, human. A touch of the hand reveals the vibration of those sounds beneath the surface. Everyday sounds become something the body can feel. The work invites visitors to listen with their bodies, to pay closer attention to what is always moving through them.
