‘Sketch for a Spatial Composition’ – sound as space
My sound practice originates from a fascination with sound as space. Influenced by early Jamaican dub, I approach the mixing desk as an instrument in which delay, feedback and reverb function as structural tools rather than effects.
Also influenced by to repetitive and minimal music and musique concrète, I treat recorded sound as material that can be isolated, layered, displaced and recontextualised. Sound evolves through successive transformations, forming dense yet permeable structures. Percussive repetition provides temporal continuity, while spatial diffusion destabilises and expands it.
Sketch for a Spatial Composition is an ongoing research project in which I explore sound as a spatial and sculptural material.
What began as a technical curiosity — how can a composition move through multiple loudspeakers? — has evolved into a broader investigation into resonance, architecture and perception. How does a delay behave when it unfolds across space? How does low-frequency energy physically inhabit a room? When does a space stop being a neutral container and become an active acoustic body?
To explore these questions, I am developing a modular system of self-built loudspeakers, including large back-loaded horn speakers. Building these speakers is an integral part of the work. The horn construction — where the woofer’s sound travels through an internal folded path before being released — produces a breathing, physically present low end.
I am now developing my mixer setup into a performative spatial instrument. The mixer functions as a compositional interface: delay, spring reverb, routing and feedback are activated during live recordings. Sounds are transformed, reintroduced and layered.
In earlier versions of Sketch for a Spatial Composition (e.g. the exhibition Peripheral, November 2025), I composed spatial movement through fixed animated trajectories — sounds travelling between loudspeakersalong predefined paths.
The current phase of the project explores a possible conceptual shift. Rather than approaching spatiality primarily as directional movement, I am investigating how sound might be organised as overlapping sonic fields within a six-speaker configuration.
This field-based approach is still under development; it functions as a working hypothesis.
The sonic material combines field recordings from transitional environments — railway stations, wetlands and urban passages — with self-generated tones and fragments from my dub-techno practice. Influenced by early Jamaican dub, where delay, reverb and feedback function as structural tools, I treat the mixing desk as an instrument for constructing space rather than decorating sound.
The sound-space that emerges is not a representation of a recognisable place, but an imaginary and layered auditory topography. Not a classical soundscape, but a sonic assemblage in which fragments of urbanity, nature, movement and memory intertwine. Rather than evoking a single location, the work constructs a transformed mental sonic map of passages.
There is a strong parallel with my printmaking practice, especially in screen printing. Transparent clour layers and raster patterns interfere, overlap and generate subtle perceptual shifts. My approach to sound follows the same logic: layered structures create shifting acoustic presences. In both practices, space emerges through material interaction.
Sketch for a Spatial Composition is not a fixed piece but an evolving instrument — a long-term investigation into how sound, object and architecture can continuously reshape one another.
