Sound Art and Design
A selection of work from recent commissions and my own creative practice
I work with field recordings, found sounds, narratives and music. My creative practice often engages explicitly with ecological issues, responding to questions about our relationship with the landscape and living world, and is motivated by an awareness that we live in a time of environmental crisis.
Curlew Sickle Moon - an audio-visual installation
A 2024 commission from lantern puppet-maker and sculptor Sue Walpole to work together on an audio-visual installation at IOU Theatre (Dean Clough Mills, Halifax), celebrating the local curlew population. Field trips to moors and estuaries to understand curlews and gather sounds, and close collaboration with Sue and audio-visual artist John Bonner resulted in brick-work walls transformed into a room of light, shadows, sounds and sculpture – an opportunity for audiences to step away from the everyday and immerse themselves in the world of the curlew and its companions. Information on the life of this iconic local bird was also provided.
Photos of installation sculptures and visuals, taken by Sue Walpole 
Curlews over-winter on the Britain’s estuaries, coming up to the moors in early Spring for the breeding season. Listen to an opening excerpt from the installation’s soundscape (which tracked this annual cycle) here. Sounds you hear were recorded at Morecambe Bay.
"I now want to go and learn more about curlews”
Feedback from visitors:
"It’s so atmospheric, I love how it all works together”
"I stayed for ages to experience different bits again”
For more conversation on curlews check out Nature Tripping Episode 27
Elevation - a guided binaural soundwalk narrated by the voice of Blackstone Edge
Photo taken by Parvez Qadir on one of the walks
Working as a sound designer for Rochdale’s Breaking Barriers, this ambitious outdoor project utilised silent disco headphones and the Go Button ‘live show’ app to guide people on a sonic journey across the moors… rain or shine. Designed to be accessible for all, and narrated by the voice of the landscape itself, the journey immersed audiences in “a rich collage of sound and story” from past and present. You can listen to the audio experience below, without a trip to the moors!
"Rochdales’s Breaking Barriers production company is raising the bar with new project Elevation." Anja Jungmayr, The Meteor, 12 June 2024
"It was beautiful, what an experience. I loved the binaural sound headphones and listening to people’s stories of the moors through them” Sue L. audience member
BBC Sound First and Words First
“ Emerging talent from two BBC talent development schemes - Sound First and Words First - collaborate to create new sound worlds of spoken word and sound design”.
Between The Ears show note, BBC Radio 3
I worked with two fantastic poets Anisa Butt and Nigeen Dara, to place each of their poems into its own sound world. Take a listen below. Everyone’s work is also available to hear on BBC Radio 3’s Between the Ears, 03 March 2024 episode, via BBC Sounds.
“"It was such a pleasure to work with Jo, she really took my vision and ran with it and also gave me her creative input. I loved that she took the initiative to collect raw sounds to make this vision possible. The piece was exactly what I hoped for it to be." Anisa Butt
No Need To Whisper - a binaural soundscape with Breaking Barriers
A 12 minute binaural soundscape evoking the sounds of Lancashire’s libraries and museums. Listeners with headphones experience sounds from all around, transporting them to another space.
Sounds evoking library and museum spaces - from ambiences, to activities, to objects - were recorded on location, along with narratives from library and museum staff, volunteers and visitors. These sounds and additional music were woven into an audio experience for headphone listening.
Created with Breaking Barriers (Parvez Qadir & Jodie Ratcliffe), and commissioned by Culturepedia.
Listen to No Need To Whisper on your headphones:
A man listening to No Need To Whisper on silent disco headphones during its summer 2023 tour of Lancashire’s public spaces. Photo credit: Oliver Ibbotson
Todmorden Then and Now - a binaural soundscape for Todmorden Book Festival
A 16 minute binaural soundscape commissioned by Todmorden Book Festival. Funded by the Arts Council, Community Foundation For Calderdale and Todmorden Town Council. The soundscape uses audio interviews collected by oral historian Ian Alderson for his previous project Tod Tales, along with new interviews conducted specifically for this project. Spoken word from these interviews, music (from the local brass band, choirs and Fantasy Orchestra), field recordings and found sounds are brought together to create a sonic collage capturing the essence of Todmorden past and present. Launched at Todmorden Library on 18th November 2023 and available to listen to on You Tube Please use headphones.
Archive photo of a Todmorden street. Image courtesy of Todmorden Book Festival website
HERD soundscapes
Three 15-20 minute soundscapes combining music and field recordings, one evoking the distant past, one the industrial revolution and one the modern day. Each one installed into its own roving sheep sculpture!
Created for Artichoke as part of Kirklees Year of Music 2023
Glitchy and dystopian, incorporating the sounds of sheep, electromagnetic noise, and AI voices.
Situated by a canal this soundscape was slow, dark and watery, with sounds evocative of Huddersfield’s industrial past.
Photo credit: Abi Bliss
How to save a Nutty Noise Maker
An 8 minute audio piece springing from a larger 2021 creative project about the Corncrake - a once common but now endangered bird found in only a few locations around the UK. With thanks to contributors John Bowler, Jamie Macdonald and my mum.
This piece won the Wildlife Sound Recording Society’s Richard Margochis Documentary Competition in 2021. Building on the original audio piece, I was commissioned by RSPB Scotland to make a small audio-visual installation: The Case of the Corncrake. The installation (comprising of a suitcase) incorporates a beautiful Tiree scene crafted by felt maker Vivienne Morpeth and is currently touring with an RSPB Scotland exhibition highlighting the plight of this bird.
The Case of the Corncrake installed at Dumfries Museum, 2022
Towneley Hall Museum Children’s Audio Guide.
A 2021 commission from Towneley Hall Museum, Burnley to work with a local primary school to create an immersive audio guide for children to listen to on headphones. The audio guide is also available as a podcast.
Click on the right to hear a selection of the audio scenes I created based on the carefully edited children’s narrative (recorded at their school). The scenes were built using recordings from the museum’s rooms and outside environment, along with foley sounds and music.
I am on my way to the Sea
In summer 2020 I undertook an artistic residency at Huddersfield based arts organisation ame, resulting in a solo exhibition: 'I Am On My Way To The Sea'. The exhibition included a mixture of visual and audio material based on my experiences walking down the River Colne from its source above Marsden, to its confluence with the larger River Calder, and how I came to understand people's relationship with the river.
You can also read a short blog here
I Am On My Way To The Sea (2021)
This short film edited Stephen Harvey uses a selection the audio, visual and narrative material I created on my journey. I'd like to thank Stephen for his work. The film represents both an archive of the exhibition, and a fresh and alternative presentation of the work in an alternative medium.
WASTE (2020)
Waste is a short audio-visual piece inspired by the sewerage infrastructure that runs along side the Colne and discharges waste water into it at many points. Metal pipes, grates, manhole covers, outfalls, and sewage debris. Stick a microphone up an outfall pipe and you will hear distant underground echoes and rumbles. Field recordings were made with a mixture of ambient mics, contact mics and hydrophones. Thanks to Jez Riley French for showing me how you can use contact mics on pipes to generate bell-like resonances - a technique I employ extensively in this piece.
WAUL (2020)
On my journey down the river I began to relate to it as a living entity. Access to its bank-side was often restricted and at several points the river was completely covered over, flowing in the dark. WAUL is inspired by this loss of light and life. Thank you to intrepid instrumentalist, Jorge Boehringer, who joined me under a Milnsbridge mill one afternoon for a field recording session.
A selection of River Colne ‘ready-mades’ extracted from the watercourse and repurposed as art.
Rewiliding (2019)
I live in West Yorkshire on the edge of the South Pennines. The surrounding upland landscape holds a stark, dramatic beauty, but I also consider it to be relatively ecologically impoverished, with dominant land management regimes leaving little opportunity for native wildlife to thrive. In Rewilding I imagine an alternative reality where humans have rebalanced their relationship with other species, natural habitats are restored, and nature is back. The piece takes the form of two halves, the first set within the current landscape, and the second an exploration of the range of habitats which might prevail in a more ecologically balanced alternative. The re-imagined landscape is not beyond the bounds of possibility - all species and scenes included could be present if we chose. You can find out a bit more about the making of this piece here.
Life in the Rain (2019) (binaural)
Life in the Rain was originally created as a 5.1 surround sound piece but has been remixed here for binaural playback. for the best experience listen to it using headphones, not stereo room speakers.
The piece explores the sonic and visual world of rain. In recent years heavy rain in my home town has led to local flooding. There are times when one can feel immersed (or submerged even) in the sounds and sensation of rainwater and run-off. The title of this piece is open to interpretation. It may refer to the life of an individual in the rain, maybe a human or possibly a small creature such as the spider or snail in the piece. The macro photography suggests a world viewed from such a perspective. It could also however refer to the life within the rain water itself: small sounds are zoomed in on for their intrinsic sonic qualities, whilst at other times one experiences textures of water in a highly kinetic, arrhythmic state.
For the largest part of our species existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, engaging possibilities with every flapping form, with each textured, surfaced and shivering entity we happened to focus on...Every sound was a voice, every scrape or blunder was a meeting - with Thunder, with Oak, with Dragonfly. And from all of these relationships our collective sensibilities were nourished.
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous