Media

SPARC’s world-leading research is known for examining music’s role in addressing major societal issues, such as health and the environment, and for extending the frontier of practice in sound and music by using new technologies and embodied methods.

Our research takes many forms, from compositions, installations and performances to academic articles and books.

Featured Audio and Video

CHIME: Community Health intervention through Musical Engagement

CHIME: Community Health intervention through Musical Engagement, funded by the NIHR, is working to evaluate a music-based programme co-developed with pregnant women and local women’s groups in The Gambia.

Over six weekly sessions, women sing familiar songs with adapted lyrics about maternal health, building social support, lifting mood, and promoting wellbeing. A feasibility trial showed positive effects on maternal mental health, providing the foundation for expansion.

In this current project, we are testing CHIME’s effectiveness and cost-effectiveness in The Gambia through a full randomised control trial. We plan to adapt and evaluate it in an urban South African setting, and explore its potential in Lesotho, where music is culturally central but health promotion strategies are limited.

Impact will be assessed through maternal mental health, well-being, and functioning, alongside routine clinic and infant outcomes.

Working with communities, women with lived experience, and stakeholders, we aim to establish CHIME as a scalable, sustainable approach that improves maternal mental health and empowers women through culturally rooted practice.

We are environments for each other

We are environments for each other (live performance) Mira Benjamin/Zubin Kanga/Scott McLaughlin

Intra-action 12.01.23

Intra-action 12.01.23 was recorded live in a studio in January 2023. Intra-action is a computer system for improvisation where listening synthesis agents are capturing behaviours from human performance input and responding to each other.

A Thousand Words for Weather

A Thousand Words for Weather was an audio experience that explored the connection between the environment, language, sound and silence. Created by Claudia Molitor together with the writer Jessica J. Lee and developed through a collaboration between Artangel and Senate House Library, several listening areas were located across three floors of the library.

UK-based poets of different mother tongues, each choose and defined ten weather words in Arabic, Bengali, English, German, French, Mandarin, Polish, Spanish, Turkish, and Urdu. The words where then translated to form a thousand-word multilingual ‘dictionary’, that proposes share language to describe our changing environment while exploring the nuance of meaning in translation.

Recordings of the words became the starting point for a series of audio installations played back through a bespoke system designed by software architect Peter Chilvers that input real-time data from the Met Office, enabling the sound to be determined by the weather outside.

“Above all, there is a soundscape. This is mesmerising and subtle. It hovers in personal headphones, tactfully contained, which are available on every floor of the library. It lingers in the stairwells like internal weather. At 1pm it emits through speakers everywhere: a sonic lunchtime each day.” Laura Cumming in The Guardian.

Multi.modal

multi.modal aims to muddy the borders between improvisation, field recording and composition. Our releases reflect contemporary music practices which tend to be collaborative, outward looking and multi.modal.

multi.modal is curated by Claudia Molitor and Tullis Rennie.

Multi.modal releases can be purchased via Bandcamp.

Featured Publications

Sonic Figurations for the Anthropocene

Sonic Figurations for the Anthropocene is an article written in collaboration by Joseph Browning and the composer Liza Lim, which explores Lim's music in relation to themes of the more-than-human world and ecological crisis. Inspired by medieval bestiaries, the article uses experimental writing and formatting to construct a compendium of ‘creatures’ found in Lim’s compositions. It was published as an open access article in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, a leading publication that features research from across music studies. https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2023.3

Music, marbling and multisensory tracing

Music, marbling and multisensory tracing is an article by Ruth Herbert and Jackie Walduck. Subjective experiences of participatory arts are inevitably multisensory and multimodal, arising from systemic interactions between individuals, stimulus attributes (affordances of the artform(s) with which they engage) and environment. This article considers an ongoing immersive multisensory participatory arts initiative for adults living with mental ill health, taking place in both community and healthcare settings, utilizing Turkish water marbling (ebru) and musical sound generation. Marbling and music are shown to simultaneously mobilize and synthesize different senses and modes of experience in ways that can be conceptualized as a low arousal mode of immersive trancing. Motion, repetition and pattern emerge as key stimulus attributes facilitating immersion. Psychological qualities of experience include narrowed attentional focus, heightened sensory acuity, reduction of thought, present-centered conscious awareness. Shifts away from baseline states of consciousness provide temporary respite from aspects of self (such as overthinking/emoting). Perspectives from consciousness studies and psychological phenomenology highlight the self-regulatory potential of multisensory arts-based engagement.

But the right words, never come

Smith, J. (2025). ‘But the right words, never come': Transformative Identities, Female Agency, and Performance in Sayonara Wild Hearts (2019). Singing Out (pp. 136–146). Edinburgh University Press.

Recent Publications

Fakhraeirad, A., Nooshin, L. ORCID: 0000-0001-8737-5224 & Rezaie, A. (2026). A Sonic Tale of Two Cities: Memory, Trauma, and Auditory Scars in Tehran and Abadan-Khorramshahr. In: Chehabi, H. & Siamdoust, N. (Eds.), Iran Amplified: One Hundred Years of Music and Society. . Boston, USA: Ilex Project.

Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991 (2026). Sonic Lives. In: Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991, Shaughnessy, N. & Williams, E. (Eds.), Beyond Autistic Stereotypes: New Perspectives on Identities, Gender and Experience. . Oxford University Press.

Browning, J. ORCID: 0000-0001-7013-7959 (2025). The More-than-human Worlds of Australian Shakuhachi Music. Asian Music,

Duara, R., Pavlopoulou, G., Hugh-Jones, S. , Shaughnessy, N., Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991, Baker, S., Williams, E., Sonuga-Barke, E., Bhui, K., Mankee-Williams, A. & Cooke, P. (2025). Exploring similarities and differences in how researchers and young people understand key terms in youth mental-health research. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12(1), article number 1521. doi: 10.1057/s41599-025-05809-5

Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991 & Parkinson, A. (2025). Cross-Genre Musicking in Individual and Collaborative Group Contexts: Lived Experience and Musical Identity. In: Music Performers' Lived Experiences. (pp. 166-187). London, UK: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781003352778-10

Shaughnessy, N., Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991 & Walduck, J. (2025). Panel: Attuning to Impact Creatively: Evaluating Participatory Arts in Adolescent Mental Health Research. Paper title: Creative Process as Impact: The Participatory Play Framework. Paper presented at the More Culture Less Medicine - 5 Years On, 14-15 Feb 2025, University of Brighton.

Gaston-Bird, L. ORCID: 0000-0002-9109-3382 (2024). Immersive but not Inclusive: Challenges Faced by Underrepresented Groups in Immersive Audio. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, University of Surrey)

Nooshin, L. ORCID: 0000-0001-8737-5224 & Salavati, K. (2024). Tehran City Symphonies: The Sounds of Conflicted Modernities, Silent Spaces and Highway Pleasures. In: Ghorbankarimi, M., Langford, M. & Khosroshah, Z. (Eds.), The I.B.Tauris Handbook of Iranian Cinema. . Bloomsbury.

Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991 & Walduck, J. ORCID: 0000-0002-2603-3404 (2024). Music, marbling and multisensory trancing. The Senses and Society, 19(3), pp. 351-365. doi: 10.1080/17458927.2024.2398916

Shaughnessy, N., Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991, Williams, E. , Walduck, J., von Jungenfeld, R. & Newman, H. (2024). Playing with data differently: engaging with autism and gender through participatory arts/music and a performative framework for analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, article number 1324036. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1324036

Nystrom, E. ORCID: 0000-0003-3628-540X (2024). Unformation and Information, more or less (than) human. Paper presented at the Noisefloor, 27-29 May 2024, Escola Superior de Musica de Lisboa.

Benjamin, M., McLaughlin, S. & Kanga, Z. (2024). we are environments for each other [Audio CD]. NMC Recordings.

Gaston-Bird, L. ORCID: 0000-0002-9109-3382 (2024). It’s immersive, but is it inclusive?. Representology: the Journal of Media and Diversity, 6(6), pp. 40-47.

Kanga, Z., Dyer, M., Rowley, C. , Packham, J., Benjamin, M., Climent, R., Gioti, A-M., Gorton, D., Hayden, S., Howard, E., Edmund, H., Laidlow, R., McLaughlin, S., Nickel, L. & Redhead, L. (2024). Technology and Contemporary Classical Music: Methodologies in Practice-Based Research. National Centre for Research Methods.

Nooshin, L. ORCID: 0000-0001-8737-5224 (2024). Shahnameh in the Classroom: Iranian Music and DIY Cultural Diplomacy in the UK. In: Lopes da Cunha, M. M. R., Shannon, J., Møller Sørensen, S. & Danielson, V. (Eds.), Music and Cultural Diplomacy in the Middle East: Geopolitical Re-Configurations for the 21st Century. (pp. 123-146). Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-36279-8_6

Williams, E., Glew, S., Newman, H. , Kapka, A., Shaughnessy, N., Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991, Walduck, J., Foster, A., Cooke, P., Pethybridge, R., Shaughnessy, C. & Hugh‐Jones, S. (2023). Practitioner Review: Effectiveness and mechanisms of change in participatory arts‐based programmes for promoting youth mental health and well‐being – a systematic review. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 64(12), pp. 1735-1764. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13900

Nooshin, L. ORCID: 0000-0001-8737-5224 (2023). The Sonic Intimacies of Khosrow Sinai’s A Lost Requiem (1983). In: Wilford, S., Tragaki, D. & Cottrell, S. (Eds.), Ethnomusicology and Its Intimacies. . Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781003365792-16

Gioti, A. M., Einbond, A. ORCID: 0000-0003-1734-6641 & Born, G. (2023). Composing the Assemblage: Probing Aesthetic and Technical Dimensions of Artistic Creation with Machine Learning. Computer Music Journal, 46(4), pp. 1-43. doi: 10.1162/comj_a_00658

Carpentier, T. & Einbond, A. ORCID: 0000-0003-1734-6641 (2023). Spherical correlation as a similarity measure for 3-D radiation patterns of musical instruments. Acta Acustica, 7(40), article number 40. doi: 10.1051/aacus/2023033

Browning, J. ORCID: 0000-0001-7013-7959 & Lim, L. (2023). Sonic Figurations for the Anthropocene: A Musical Bestiary in the Compositions of Liza Lim. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 148(1), pp. 1-34. doi: 10.1017/rma.2023.3

Chadburn, L. (2023). Captions, Characters, Self-Portraits: Compositional Approaches to the Disembodied Speaking Voice and the Voice-Text-Music Relationship. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City, University of London)

Einbond, A. ORCID: 0000-0003-1734-6641, Carpentier, T., Schwarz, D. & Bresson, J. (2022). Embodying Spatial Sound Synthesis with AI in Two Compositions for Instruments and 3D Electronics. Computer Music Journal, 46(4), pp. 43-61. doi: 10.1162/comj_a_00664

Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991 (2022). Musical Daydreaming and Kinds of Consciousness. In: Kussner, M., Taruffi, L. & Floridou, G. (Eds.), Music and Mental Imagery. SEMPRE Studies in the Psychology of Music. (pp. 167-177). London UK: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429330070-18

Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991 (2022). Participation and Playing A/Part. In: Moran, N. & Kim, Y. (Eds.), Proceedings of the13th Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, CIM22: ‘Participation’. 13th Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, 8-10 Jun 2022, Edinburgh, UK.

Carpentier, T. & Einbond, A. ORCID: 0000-0003-1734-6641 (2022). Spherical correlation as a similarity measure for 3D radiation patterns of musical instruments. Paper presented at the 16ème Congrès Français d’Acoustique, 11-15 Apr 2022, Marseille, France.

Nystrom, E. ORCID: 0000-0003-3628-540X (2022). Sound as Synthesis: technological listening and intra-faces of sound. In: Electroacoustic Music Studies Network (EMS). EMS21 Conference, 10-13 Nov 2021, Leicester, UK. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.5981500

Browning, J. ORCID: 0000-0001-7013-7959 (2021). Sound and More-than-human Sociality in Catherine Clover’s Oh! Ah ah pree trra trra. Organised Sound: an international journal of music and technology, 26(2), pp. 179-189. doi: 10.1017/s1355771821000352

Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991, Walduck, J., Newman, H. & Shaughnessy, N. (2021). Neurodiverse Worlds: Articulating the Subjective Experience of Autistic Girls Through Music and Sound. In: ICMPC16 - ESCOM11. 16th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, 28-31 Jul 2021, Online.

Einbond, A. ORCID: 0000-0003-1734-6641, Bresson, J., Schwarz, D. & Carpentier, T. (2021). Instrumental Radiation Patterns as Models for Corpus-Based Spatial Sound Synthesis: Cosmologies for Piano and 3D Electronics. In: Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference 2021. (pp. 148-153). San Francisco, USA: International Computer Music Association, Inc..

McLaughlin, S., Kanga, Z. & Benjamin, M. (2021). Composing Technique, Performing Technique. Journal for Artistic Research, 23(23), doi: 10.22501/jar.711320

Herbert, R. ORCID: 0000-0002-7878-9991 (2021). Young people's lived experience of music in everyday life: Psychological and phenomenological perspectives. In: Berger, H. M., Riedel, F. & VanderHamm, D. (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Phenomenology of Music Cultures. (pp. 173-198). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190693879.013.18

Nystrom, E. ORCID: 0000-0003-3628-540X (2021). Strange Posthuman Attractors: algorithmic improvisation as acousmatic poiēsis. Organised Sound: an international journal of music and technology, 26(1), pp. 31-41. doi: 10.1017/s1355771821000030

Molitor, C. ORCID: 0000-0002-3777-833X & Magnusson, T. (2021). Curating experience: Composition as cultural technology - a conversation. Journal of New Music Research, 50(2), pp. 184-189. doi: 10.1080/09298215.2021.1898646

Molitor, C. ORCID: 0000-0002-3777-833X (2021). Composition as Hyperobject. APRIA (Artez PLatform for Research Interventions of the Arts), 3(2), pp. 57-64. doi: 10.37198/apria.03.02.a7

Nooshin, L. ORCID: 0000-0001-8737-5224 (2021). Affective listening, sonic intimacy and the power of quiet voices in Rakhshan Banietemad’s the May Lady: Towards a cinema of empathy. In: Ghorbankarimi, M. (Ed.), ReFocus: The Films of Rakhshan Banietemad. . Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

Browning, J. ORCID: 0000-0001-7013-7959 (2021). Decomposed: the political ecology of music. Ethnomusicology Forum, 30(1), pp. 172-175. doi: 10.1080/17411912.2021.1923549

Browning, J. ORCID: 0000-0001-7013-7959 (2020). Emotion as Multiple: Rehearsing Voyage to the Moon. In: Davidson, J. W., Halliwell, M. & Rocke, S. (Eds.), Opera, Emotion and the Antipodes. (pp. 192-218). Routledge.

Rennie, T. ORCID: 0000-0001-8937-2780 (2020). Sociosonic Interventions: Distributed Authorship in Socially Engaged Sound Practices. Leonardo Music Journal, 30, pp. 113-117. doi: 10.1162/lmj_a_01102

Nystrom, E. ORCID: 0000-0003-3628-540X (2020). Intra-Action

Browning, J. ORCID: 0000-0001-7013-7959 (2020). Meeting the Garden Halfway: Ethnographic Encounters with a Sound Installation Microculture. Ethnomusicology, 64(3), pp. 498-526. doi: 10.5406/ethnomusicology.64.3.0498

Nooshin, L. ORCID: 0000-0001-8737-5224 (2020). Parenting and Music Studies Forum. Ethnomusicology Forum, 29(3), pp. 269-275. doi: 10.1080/17411912.2020.1873553

Nystrom, E. ORCID: 0000-0003-3628-540X (2020). Intra-Actions: Experiments with Velocity and Position in Continuous Controllers. Poster presented at the NIME 2020, 21-25 Jul 2020, Birmingham, UK.

Browning, J. ORCID: 0000-0001-7013-7959 (2020). Involving experiences: audiencing and co-reception in Pleasure Garden. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 145(1), pp. 191-227. doi: 10.1017/rma.2020.10

Nystrom, E. ORCID: 0000-0003-3628-540X (2020). Topographic Synthesis: A demonstration. Paper presented at the Virtual BEAST FEaST, 01-02 May 2020, Birmingham, UK.

Browning, J. ORCID: 0000-0001-7013-7959 (2020). Remaking Classical Music: Cultures of Creativity in Pleasure Garden. Twentieth-Century Music, 17(1), pp. 23-61. doi: 10.1017/s1478572219000355