Paper Session 3
2-2.20pm: Diffuse Architectures: Sound, Space, and the IKO by Dr Emma Margetson
Rather than treating the physical space as a neutral container for sound, the work repositions it as an active compositional force. Against the idea of music as a self-contained object deposited into a room, this work proposes something more entangled. The IKO is constitutively bound to its surroundings – the space is not a vessel for the composition but part of its substance, active and transformable.
Emma Margetson (b.1993) is an acousmatic composer and sound artist based in the United Kingdom. Her output encompasses acousmatic composition, sound art, acousmatic performance interpretation and, occasionally, live electronic music improvisation. Her research interests include sound diffusion and spatialisation practices; site-specific works, sound walks and installations; audience development and engagement; and community music practice. Her music has been recognised and performed extensively in concerts and festivals internationally, and has been the recipient of a special mention in the Biennial Acousmatic Composition Competition Métamorphoses (Belgium, 2020), the Excellence in Sound Art & Sound Design Prize in the klingt gut! Young Artist Award (Germany, 2018), and a First prize ex æquo in the Space of Sound Spatialization Performance Competition (Belgium, 2019). Emma Margetson is a Senior Lecturer in Music and Sound and Programme Leader of the MA Music and Sound Design course at the University of Greenwich (England, UK). She is also Co-Director of the Loudspeaker Orchestra Concert Series. Her work is available on several recording labels, including empreintes DIGITALes.
2.20-2.40pm: From Overwhelming Noise to Reflective Space: Interactive Spatial Audio in Echoes and Imagery by Tsz Kin Wong (WAVINCITY)
After four years of systematic field recording for the WAVINCITY project in Hong Kong, the artist grew increasingly overwhelmed by the dense urban soundscapes previously documented as objective representations. Traditionally, the practice pursued maximum objectivity by maintaining the recordist’s absence during capture. Echoes and Imagery (2025) marks a shift from this non-interventionist approach to a more active role in shaping sonic material.
The installation transforms passive documentation into participatory construction. Visitors are invited to build their own ideal soundscapes by positioning and combining sonic elements. The work explores how individual perception and the act of actively shaping sound can turn overwhelming urban noise into a space for personal reflection, revealing feelings about surroundings that often remain hidden.
Presented in Hong Kong in 2025, the installation used an 8-speaker surround array with a custom real-time Ambisonics workflow. A touchscreen controller enabled participants to control the location and distance of sound objects, triggering layered field recordings and synchronized real-time visuals. Everyday urban sounds were combined with rarer elements and natural sounds, producing impossible juxtapositions that encouraged playful experimentation or thoughtful curation. The installation created a safe space for reflection, allowing participants to uncover personal associations and reshape their sonic experience of the urban environment.
This talk examines the compositional strategies of treating field recordings as movable sonic objects, the balance between randomness and listener agency, and the observed embodied and perceptual responses. It also addresses questions in the aesthetics and politics of immersive sound: who shapes the city’s auditory character, and how interactive spatial systems can restore agency in everyday listening.
Peter Wong Tsz Kin (王梓健) is a Hong Kong-born sound artist, field recordist and audio engineer, currently based in Manchester, UK. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) Degree in Theatre and Entertainment Arts from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, majoring in Sound Design.
In 2021, he founded WAVINCITY – Hong Kong Urban Soundscape Recording Project, an ongoing initiative dedicated to systematically documenting the city’s multifaceted urban soundscapes. Through unprocessed field recordings captured across Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the New Territories, and outlying islands, the project builds a public sound map and archive. These recordings preserve the sonic identity of the city and serve as raw material for artistic creation, treating the urban environment itself as a living composer.
Wong’s practice centres on the relationships between sound, memory, identity, and perception in dense urban settings. He explores how field recordings can offer new ways of listening to and experiencing the overlapping layers of time and place within a city. His approach emphasises minimal intervention during capture, allowing the natural rhythms, textures, and accidental elements of the environment to emerge.
Notable works include the 2023 sonic installation Echoes of Urban Memory and the 2025 participatory soundscape installation Echoes and Imagery. He has also released the experimental album Ambience on Ambience, which transforms WAVINCITY field recordings into extended ambient pieces that challenge conventional listening habits by embracing non-linear and irregular sonic structures.
With a background that spans sound design, audio engineering, field recording, and web technologies, Wong continues to investigate immersive and interactive approaches to sound, seeking to deepen awareness of the sonic environments that shape daily urban life.
2.40-3pm: Dis-Immersion: Reframing Spatial Audio through Auraldiversity by John Drever
Spatial audio is increasingly framed through the promise of total immersion – a seamless, enveloping sensory experience that has become a dominant paradigm in both technological development and sonic practice. This talk challenges normative assumptions embedded within spatial audio practices, particularly the implicit model of the symmetrical listener with good localisation skills, an auraltypical model deeply inscribed into spatial audio shaping not only how sound is conceived, but also who is able to access, interpret, and inhabit these sonic environments.
Drawing on the discourse of auraldiversity, the talk expands spatial hearing beyond this narrow framework. It asks: what kind of auditory capacities do spatial audio systems assume or require? How do these systems accommodate listeners with asymmetrical hearing conditions (paracusis loci), single-sided deafness, or difficulties with the cocktail party effect? Conversely, what can be learned from forms of heightened spatial perception (panacusis loci) such as echolocation? The discussion also considers spatial prosthetics – including headphones, hearing aids, bone conduction devices and cochlear implants. These technologies often produce monoaural or asymmetrical listening conditions, complicating conventional models of spatial fidelity.
In dialogue with Chattopadhyay’s post-immersion (Chattopadhyay 2020), a timely critique of the dominance of consumerist approaches to sound and media, this talk introduces dis-immersion as a complementary critical framework. Dis-immersion positions asymmetry not as deficits, but as sites of creative and critical potential, calling for a rethinking of spatial audio practices – one that embraces auraldiversity, opening new aesthetic possibilities. Drawing inspiration from a pataphysical sensibility, the talk proposes playful and unconventional approaches to auditory spatial perception, where the absurd, the partial, and the non-normative become a generative force for sonic art.
John Levack Drever is a sound artist, acoustician, and researcher. He is Creative Director of the soundscape and ambiance consultancy Otoloci and currently a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge Digital Humanities, where he co-directs LAURA (Leverhulme Trust Aural Diversity Doctoral Research Hub). He leads Working Group 1 of COST Action CA23145, Architectural and Urban Ambiances of European Cities, and is co-chair of the Inclusive Engineering Working Group for Noise Network Plus. For over two decades, as Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art, John led the MMus in Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he co-founded the Unit for Sound Practice Research (SPR). In 2007, prompted by his experiences as a new parent, John began investigating the soundscapes of public toilets, where the widespread adoption of so-called “ecological” hand dryers had created hostile acoustic environments. This work led him to articulate auraldiversity: a paradigm shift from an otological model of “normal” hearing to a socio-cultural understanding of how auraltypical norms are imposed. This inclusive framework is now influencing discourse and practice across music, sound studies, acoustics, and urban design. Notably, his research methods encompass both traditional acoustics and innovative techniques, such as co-composition. His latest project on dis-immersion foregrounds lived, asymmetric, embodied listening and prosthetic mediation, critically challenging the assumptions underpinning immersive media.
An active sonic artist, John has collaborated with artists such as Rachel Gomme, Alice Oswald, Alaric Sumner, Tony Thatcher, Tony Whitehead (RSPB), Louise K. Wilson, Suiji Okada, and comedian Mark Kelly. He is a member of Blind Ditch and has worked extensively with poet Lawrence Upton. His commissions span Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris (1999), Shiga National Museum in Japan (2012), Trumpington Park Primary School in Cambridge (2021-22), and IMMA, Dublin (2023).