SPARC Symposium 2025: Entangle!  

This year’s SPARC symposium is centred on entanglement between humans and our natural, built or technological environments. Through immersive concerts, talks, workshops and a fieldtrip we invite people from diverse artistic and academic backgrounds to come together to discuss, explore and debate. This year we entangle a marine biologist, sound artists, composers, instrumental and electroacoustic performers.

The symposium features SPARC Lab, our outstanding technological facilities for immersive sound and movement, based at City St George’s Department of Performing Arts, including an Ambisonic 24.4-channel loudspeaker dome surrounding the audience and the IKO: a unique, 20-sided, 3-D loudspeaker array.

We are grateful for support from the City St George’s Enhancing Research Culture (ERC) and Higher Education Innovation Funds (HEIF) as well as funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for SPARC Lab.

Please note, each event requires a separate registration. Please visit the links below to see event details and booking forms.

Symposium Overview:

Wednesday 4th June

16:00-18:00
Workshop with GBSR Duo

GBSR Duo give an insider view of performing immersive sound live: the duo will present hands-on demonstrations of the instruments, techniques, technologies, and aesthetics that go into producing this evening’s concert event with 3-D sound.

19:00
Concert: GBSR Duo
Venue: Performance Space 

GBSR Duo - George Barton (percussion) and Siwan Rhys (piano) - combines two of the UK's finest young contemporary chamber instrumentalists. The duo has built its reputation on a combination of exceptional interpretations of the existing piano-percussion repertoire, committed performances of ambitious new commissions, and inventive collaborations. Including works by Angharad Davies, Aaron Einbond, and Claudia Molitor.

Thursday 5th June

17:00-18:30
Workshop: Intra-Action wih Erik Nyström
Venue: Performance Space 

19:00
Concert: Erik Nystrom
Venue: Performance Space

Erik Nystrom, composer of electroacoustic works, live computer music, and sound installations, using multichannel sound projection, generative algorithms, improvised performance and acousmatic sound, will perform his new release.

Friday 6th June

19:00
Concert: Nkisi and Mohammed Rowe
Venue: Performance Space

Nkisi performs Shapes of Ruins as Energetic Devices: a powerful exploration of ancient ruins as vibrational technologies, where geometry, energy, and sound converge as gateways to memory and transformation. Mohammed Rowe crafts rich sonic tapestries from found sounds, experimental techniques, and spontaneous composition. This concert is presented on the SPARC Lab immersive sound system, and is curated in collaboration with IKLECTIK art lab, a creative platform that showcases contemporary art, experimental music and artistic critical practice.

Saturday 7th June

11:00–18:00
Symposium Talks and Installation
Venue: Room AG09

Aritsts and researchers consider the theme of entanglement and its connections to the the symposium programme with keynote talks by Marine Biologist Sophie Nedelec and eco-acoustic artist David Monacchi and speakers to include sound artist Matilde Meireles, composer Ville Aslak Raasakka, composer Erik Nyström, and sound art curator Solen Fluzin who will present an interactive installation Windswept Whispers.

Sophie Nedelec is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow, at the University of Exeter working on particle acceleration passive acoustic monitoring for mapping coral reefs. She is interested in underwater sound, sensory ecology, human impacts on the environment and sustainability.

David Monacchi is an eco-acoustics researcher, composer and interdisciplinary artist. He has been developing the project »Fragments of Extinction« since 1998, conducting field research in the world’s remaining areas of undisturbed primary equatorial forest.

17:00
Windswept Whispers interactive installation by Solen Fluzin

Windswept Whispers is a spatial sound art and visual performance that immerses the listener in the elemental entanglement of human presence and nature's forces on Scotland’s Shetland Islands.

18:30
Concert: Ville Raasakka and David Monacchi
Venue: Performance Space

This evening will include ambisonics sets by Ville Raasakka, a Helsinki-based Finnish composer specialized in ecology, and David Monacchi, sound artist, researcher and eco-acoustic composer.

Sunday 8th June

12:00
Where the Paths End - London Soundwalk
Venue: Ridley Road Market entrance opposite Dalston Kingsland Overground Station

We meet in Dalston for Where the Paths End, a London Soundwalk by Seán Clancy. Bringing together field recordings of London mixed with sounds of other distant cities, electronic interludes and resonances, and the composer’s home and family, Clancy asks us to consider walking as an artistic practice of association and intervention. The walk will lead us to the Dalston Curve Garden for a closing discussion of the Symposium.