At the end of August 2024, curiosity was building at the start of the Lagan towpath in Belfast. Only rowers tend to use the River Lagan, so it was strange to have us there day in, day out. We swayed with its currents, moving back and forth and up and down on a structure made of three pontoons and scaffolding, while we clad it in cotton rope of various colours. This was the final construction stage of DRIFT. Curiosity only grew when the weather turned to pouring rain for a few days and we were still there, cladding away.

We are constantly enveloped by sound in our everyday life, often in ways we can’t even tell. As a sound artist and researcher, I am interested in the critical potential of sound to reveal and challenge conventional ways of understanding all that surrounds us. I am particularly interested in spending time with places and approaching them from multiple perspectives through sound. By listening in a multitude of ways — across various frequencies, timeframes and scales that transcend the human — we can begin to attune to diverse ecosystems and expand our perception of what surrounds us.

DRIFT was a situated, modular and temporary floating pavilion and public space developed for the River Lagan and commissioned by the Belfast City Council as part of the Belfast 2024 project in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was designed as a floating ‘instrument’ for engaging with the river in new, multi-sensory ways. And it came about as a collaborative project between two local architecture studios (OGU and MMAS) and myself, a sound artist and researcher who lived in Belfast for 8 years. During August and September 2024, DRIFT moored at two distinct sites — Stranmillis Weir and Belfast City Centre.

My previous work has involved collaborations across architecture and planning, ethnography and the environmental sciences. I have also long admired the work of Rachel O’Grady and Chris Upson (OGU Architects), close friends and regular collaborators of MMAS on critical temporary architectures. So, as you can imagine, DRIFT was the perfect project to dive into (pun intended).

DRIFT was not without contradiction. It demanded considerable resources and infrastructure to be realized, a tension the team held openly. But, unlike many public space designs, DRIFT was not tied to a prescribed function. Too often, spaces are conceived without genuine consideration for plural use, resulting in restrictive, overly programmed environments that subtly condition how people behave, such as waterfront regeneration schemes that prioritize retail and leisure consumption over dwelling, wildlife, or both.

Design choices that appear neutral often reinforce implicit assumptions about who space is for — and how it should be used — contributing to cycles of exclusion. At a time when space is increasingly contested and resources are scarce, the question arises: what futures are we designing and for whom? Any why?

We were interested in how, as a multidisciplinary group, we could create a space that opened up deeper conversations around public space, that welcomed complexity, embraced ambiguity and supported ecological and social care. All in all, a conversation between architecture and sound that moves beyond noise control or acoustic optimization, and toward design approaches that listens.

DRIFT was conceived as an adaptable structure, allowing for different configurations in response to the specific characteristics and demands of each site: the depth of the river and its currents, the wildlife in the area and the ecological context. The floating element was central to the experience: while anchored, the space moved gently with the river, occupying existing pontoons, connected via a gangway to the main platform, that were previously publicly inaccessible. But adaptability in DRIFT extended beyond its physical form. Community engagement was embedded from the outset through a research process and a series of public ‘activations’ that revealed the structure’s spatial, functional and social flexibility.

The initial research process involved extensive conversations with various communities over the course of a year. This deep contextual and interpersonal knowledge proved essential, allowing the team to identify and expand our vocabulary for transforming public space design through experiences that engage all senses.

People spoke of the river’s healing quality, of how rowing offered a different perspective on the city unavailable from its banks, and of a stubborn devotion to the rowing in the Lagan even through the 1980s, when the river’s pollution made it fetid. Others recalled vast shoals of red mullet, now rarely sighted. This process reconnected communities to the river and encouraged critical conversations about its future and entanglement with the city development. The conversation continued through the public ‘activation’ program, by bringing together diverse communities, challenging how we typically relate to urban waterways and instigating a critical connection with the river, one that acknowledges the river as a living and interconnected system.

Intimate placemaking

DRIFT sought to refocus attention on Belfast’s complex relationship with the River Lagan, challenging the city’s often disconnected and utilitarian approach to its waterfront. Like many post-industrial cities in the UK, Belfast’s relationship with the River Lagan has long been extractive and functional. After decades of neglect and pollution from agriculture and industry, much of the river’s wildlife has been depleted (read more here). Restoring this relationship requires more than ecological remediation. It demands a renewed attention that reconnects people and river, fostering forms of care and kinship that acknowledge the waterway not merely as infrastructure, but as a living presence within the city.

Central to our project was the architecture designed as a floating ‘instrument’ capable of hosting up to 50 people. This intimate scale was not incidental. It was a design choice rooted in the belief that genuine encounter, with place and with one another, requires a certain quality of attention that larger, more programmed spaces rarely afford. By highlighting the intricate dependencies between the river’s ecosystem and urban life — and exposing points where human activity disrupts these connections — DRIFT aimed to ignite curiosity and foster public dialogue that felt relational.

Throughout its month-long residency on the River Lagan, DRIFT invited visitors to inhabit both interior and exterior spaces and experience the river’s contrasting meeting points. At Stranmillis Weir, the city gives way to the Lagan Meadows; at the City-Centre, concrete walls channel the water between residential and office areas linked by busy roads and bridges. The pavilion’s gentle thresholds encouraged deep engagement with these shifting environments.

Draped in cotton ropes dyed in varying shades of blue and grey, DRIFT’s surface softly marked the boundary between inside and outside. Constructed from reusable and biodegradable materials, the structure was designed to encourage sustained, sensory immersion with the river’s full complexity — from daily kingfisher sightings to sudden winds, heavy rain, drifting debris and industrial odours; this direct encounter felt necessary. DRIFT offered a chance to simply be with the river. By creating a space that neither romanticised nor ignored the tensions between the natural and the industrial, the pavilion suggested both realities at once, and in doing so, perhaps allowed visitors to experience the river a little more clearly.

The pavilion created an immersive experience through materials that deliberately echoed common river infrastructure. Cotton rope referenced the blue nylon lines found in working waterfronts; fabric screens evoked the familiar forms of tarpaulins and sails; reusable aluminum scaffolding and brackets carried the utilitarian language of weirs and waterside structures. These visual references worked alongside the subtle sounds of the materials themselves, making DRIFT both recognizable in its vocabulary and transformative in its application. They recontextualized everyday utilitarian materials of waterside work into an invitation for new forms of placemaking.

Architectural/interactive installations are a great way to bring attention to global issues, such as the climate emergency.

DRIFT was a collective effort that extended beyond the immediate 4-person team. We collaborated closely with local grassroots projects to curate the series of public activations. These included explorations of bat ecology with Lagan Valley Regional Park ranger service; listening sessions I delivered with conversations about sound, microphones and multi-species awareness, culminating in a site-specific live performance; environmental talks about the complex history of the Lagan’s ecological health with Ian Montgomery, Professor Emeritus in Animal Ecology at Queen’s University Belfast; even foraging and plant identification with Dermot Hughes from Forage Ireland, followed by creative workshops that used the collected plants run by artists from Flax Art Studios.

There were also community yoga sessions with Maggie McKeever including closed sessions with vulnerable groups, and meditation sessions led by Tin Chan from the Stronger Together Network / Chinese Welfare Association. The programme also included floating cinema sessions run by Ormeau Community Cinema, and discussions on stargazing and light pollution with Aisling O’Beirn from Right to the Night. Site-specific river-themed concerts curated by Moving on Music, Northern Ireland’s leading promoter of jazz, folk and experimental music, were wildly popular.

In parallel, we collaborated with Wild Belfast, a group of local naturalists to map wildlife using sound. Equipped with a Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter, they mapped the species heard within a 500-metre radius of DRIFT across a four-day period. They were able to identify: Daubenton’s Bat, Leisler’s Bat, Nathusius’ Pipistrelle, Common Pipistrelle, Soprano Pipistrelle, Brown Long-eared Bat, Wood Mouse, Greater White-toothed Shrew and a Grey Seal. Local biodiversity, despite in decline, is far richer than this short snapshot suggests. Other species mapped, but not recorded during this period include: Wood pigeons, Waxwings, Tufted Ducks, Siskins, Redwings, Mute Swans, Moorhens, Mallards, Magpies, Little Grebes, Kingfishers, Fieldfares, Grey Herons, Goldfinches, Garganeys, Common Sandpipers, Black-headed Gulls, Blackbirds, Minxs and Foxes.

Every element of DRIFT reinforced the fundamental understanding that listening transcends the ear, creating a full-bodied experience that weaves all senses into intimate dialogue with the surrounding space. This quality of attention, both in making and in experiencing, is inherently communal. It requires a deliberate, co-created process, one in which multiple voices, skills and perspectives shape the work from the ground up. Collaborative methodologies became crucial in fostering this kind of transformative placemaking, with sustainable futures as its driving force.

DRIFT was a unique, creative, slowing down experience that celebrates the river. This part of our city has long been forgotten and needs to be put back at the centre.

Immersing in Sound

Joining the team from the start of the project, rather than being a commissioned artist arriving later, was transformative for all involved. Despite all the excitement, interdisciplinary work and research is very messy and complex. It doesn’t always work, but it remains vital for addressing contemporary environmental and social challenges. Plural perspectives — human, ecological, and disciplinary — enable us to improve how we work together and challenge the standard collaborative models that compartmentalize expertise rather than weaving it together from the outset. I still can’t believe this even needs saying!

Sound, or more precisely, listening, was integral to DRIFT, offering multiple invitations to listen. Active forms of listening. Be that the gentle sounds of the structure and its materials as they sway in the wind and move with the water’s flow; how the two iterations of DRIFT were designed as invitations to spend time with the water and remain attentive to micro-events in its surroundings; listening-into the history of the river; listening to biodiversity loss.

These experiences were further enhanced by one ‘permanent’ sound work and various temporary ‘activations’. Movements of water between atmosphere, land and sea was a 17-minute immersive headphone-based installation I composed. Available to visitors during DRIFT’s public activation programme, the installation took listeners on a sonic drift exploring the multitudes of water and our deep entanglement with these cycles. The work allowed visitors to travel without moving, weaving the sways of DRIFT with sounds of water I recorded throughout my geographic movements over the last decade.

I took from DRIFT a new appreciation for bats! Also, it made me think much more about the Lagan and how central it is to my life in this city. Listening to music in this context was also very enriching and interesting.

The public activation series further expanded listening opportunities through various Listening Sessions I ran at both locations where DRIFT moored. These critical talks and sonic drifts were designed as educational and communal experiences that encouraged multi-species listening and ecological entanglements. They also created space to confront the tension resulting from extractive and utilitarian approaches to the river, including the troubling quietness of the Lagan’s waters due to the scarcity of underwater wildlife activity.

Each session started with an introduction to the microphones and sensors used in my extended recording process. This was followed by a long-form improvised performance, between 30 and 45 minutes long, where I invited the audience to join me on a semi-structured journey. Listeners were taken on an augmented journey of their surrounding space, traversing subtle frequencies beyond human perception into imagined richer ecosystems. The listening sessions were played back/performed via two speakers carefully placed in the space for these sessions only (EV Everse 8 to be more technical). Sounds already present in the landscape entered into dialogue with this added layer, dissolving the boundary between the real and the imagined.

When the music was playing at the performance I was at, a kingfisher swooped down on the water. I then started noticing fish in the water and all the birds around, something I otherwise would not have noticed.

Additional activations were collaboratively curated between myself and Rachel O’Grady (OGU Architects). Each activity was designed to draw attention to the River Lagan and its ecosystem while encouraging diverse ways to engage with the river and create spaces for reflection on its future. Ultimately, these experiences aimed to foster kinship with the river.

In preparation for these Listening Sessions, I carried out a series of extended listening/recording sessions in the months leading to DRIFT. Some were solo ventures, others involved the full team and a range of participants. These sessions, paired with critical sessions in the studio listening back to the recordings with the DRIFT team, immersed everyone in and around the River Lagan. Although the recordings were often abstract, they created new spaces and expanded perceptions of the two locations where DRIFT moored. At the same time, they underscored the idea that all recordings are partial: shaped by the devices we use, the contexts in which we record or listen, and what we choose to pay attention to and when. I explored this partiality by using a range of microphones and other sensors, each attuned to different frequencies and phenomena. By juxtaposing multiple sonic movements, I was able to envelop listeners in a wide range of vibrations and frequencies, ultimately expanding what the perception of urban sound can be.

Stereo microphones recorded ambient sound; hydrophones listened underwater; VLF antennas picked up atmospheric phenomena; electromagnetic sensors revealed the hidden pulses of electronic devices; and contact microphones, used alongside a geophone, registered vibrations across various built surfaces. Together, these tools allowed me to access layers of sonic textures that often lie beyond human perception and go unnoticed. Creating access to these multitudes of signals raised questions: What were we really saying about a place and our presence within it? But perhaps equally important is what these tools could not recover such as the calls of species no longer present, the sounds the river has lost. What are we not hearing amongst this plethora of signals?

This continuous sound file has clear transitions between six examples of the field recording process:
1) A contact microphone and a geophone on a metal bridge
2) A VLF Antenna picking up electromagnetic sounds and crackles from atmospheric phenomena
3) Three electromagnetic sensors recording at the same time
4) A contact microphone and a geophone recording DRIFT’s metal structure as it sways with the River Lagan
5) Three hydrophones recording underwater movements in the River Lagan
6) A contact microphone and a geophone on a metal fence near the train station

We are all contributing to and are part of these frequencies — they do not exist in isolation, and learning to be accountable for this is important. Just as one separates trash and recycles, it is urgent to navigate the world with a sense of accountability that extends in all directions, recognizing that noise pollution is not experienced by humans alone.

During the live performances within the Listening Sessions, I also dove into abstraction, taking listeners on journeys through imagined worlds built from the manipulation of the recordings. Rhythmic movements emerged creating an experience almost like a sound film, where the documentary foundation gave way to something more visceral and dreamlike. In embracing this nuanced perspective of each place, these experimental listening sessions stopped being about what we need to know and can identify in the landscape. Instead, we learned to respect and be with the sonic environment without needing to fully grasp, reason or comprehend every detail. Sound became a way to creatively and experientially suggest the interconnectedness of things and beings.

This sense of togetherness was also felt spatially as the sound from the EV8 enveloped those on DRIFT, but also those listening from the nearby bridge, or on paddle boards, kayaks and the currach rowing closer to DRIFT to be part of this moment (see more on the Lagan Currachs here). Sound and music do not exist in isolation, they are always part of a greater whole.

Coda | ˈkəʊdə |
noun Music
the concluding passage of a piece or movement, typically forming an addition to the basic structure: the first movement ends with a fortissimo coda.

Both architecture and field recording have historically operated as extractive practices — taking from environments and communities with often little reciprocal consideration. DRIFT sought a different approach. Our collaboration was chaotic, imperfect but genuinely open. We clumsily figured out how to work together for the first time, openly acknowledging the limitations in both our disciplines and our approaches to them. Through this process, we managed to carve out space for something else.

New possibilities emerged in architecture, planning and sound art, along with the unexpected convergence that arises when such messy conversations take place. DRIFT carried its own contradictions and shortcomings, but within the constraints of a tight timeframe, limited budget and the ever-present weight of public liability concerns, something incredibly rich took shape and opened unexpected pathways.

Audiences are consistently more curious and receptive than institutional assumptions suggest. The barrier is not so much in public disinterest but in a lack of exposure and representation for experimental work. Sound artists and experimental practitioners don’t need to oversimplify creative work; we need exposure, representation and genuine opportunities like DRIFT that honor the openness of audiences to engage deeply.

When DRIFT was finally lifted from the water and packed away, we felt that Belfast was willing to reencounter its river. But this needs policy. We also felt that impact is not only measured in spectacle and vast numbers alone, but in how thoughtful, intimate and multi-sensorial design can shape local communities and contribute to placemaking and renewed meaningful connection with the River Lagan. That said, the time such interventions occupy is too brief for ecosystems to follow.

As part of the legacy plan, and in the hope of setting a precedent for future riverfront projects, the DRIFT team developed and presented a waterfront planning approach that demonstrated to Belfast City Council how multidisciplinary, ecologically-minded and small scale interventions can reshape spaces and the communities that inhabit them, but that environmental recovery operates on ecological timescales that far exceed the pace of contemporary development cycles.

In September 2025, DRIFT returned to the water for a few more weeks as another iteration. Alongside this, I worked on Four Tales, a new album that stems from the work I composed for DRIFT. It revisits the installation, the listening sessions, and Play the Space, a collaborative improvisation between myself, Conor McAuley (percussion), Michael Speers (percussion), and Paul Stapleton (tromba marina and amplified objects). It also includes a new track based on the sound recordings made by Wild Belfast I mentioned earlier. The album come with a Riso print, a collaboration with Rachel O’Grady. Through the album, the project continues to evolve, branching into new forms that I will explore more fully in future essays. In the meantime, the work seems to have resonated beyond Belfast: in 2025 the project was shortlisted for the AJ Small Projects Award, RIBA McEwen Award, and Dezeen.

At the end of each day we stepped onto firm ground with wobbly legs. Each day was so unique. I counted 20 kingfisher sightings in one day and saw a fox. We saw people coming to say goodbye to DRIFT, have their lunch break on DRIFT or listen to Movements of water on repeat with their dog. The project was a two-summer venture with preparation and production representing two years of our lives. Conceptualising, building, programming, and being there on DRIFT day in, day out, was incredibly hard work that nearly broke us, but also such a special experience. It changed us, and we are glad it did.

Acknowledgements: A big thank you to everyone involved in DRIFT, to the wonderful communities formed, to the people of Belfast and to the Belfast City Council and Belfast 2024 for taking the risk and investing in DRIFT, and to the incredible people that invigilated DRIFT. Thanks also to SARC: Centre of Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music, Queen’s University Belfast for supporting me and hosting me as a visiting scholar during 2024. And a special shout-out to Joe Laverty, for encapsulating the spirit of DRIFT through photography.

Building for Stillness was originally published in The New Climate. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

bunú challenged the usual solo activity of field recording to further explore places of their everyday life through extended listening sessions and an immersive approach to field recording.

This is how Aidan and I describe bunú on our Bandcamp page. Collaboration has been a defining element of my journey so far. I thrive on being positively challenged and growing in unexpected ways throughout the process. However, collaboration doesn’t always come easily, particularly when there’s little openness to reciprocity. While there are countless ways to collaborate, collaboration often feels more like a buzzword or a checkbox to tick off. One of my most meaningful collaborations, however, was also a relatively improbable one that effortlessly changed how I perceived recording.

Aidan and I started our collaborative journey in 2013 when we were both pursuing PhDs at SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music in Belfast (back then it was called Sonic Arts Research Centre). I don’t remember exactly how we started talking beyond the usual ‘Hiya, how’s you?’, but we ended up meeting regularly for coffee in the first-floor lounge at SARC, or sometimes in the studio. We shared insights into our decision-making processes and exchanged works in progress. Our temperaments were similar — we’re both sort of introverts. Though sociable, we found that saying things through recordings became our unique form of communication — there’s so much you can express through the process of recording. It didn’t take long for us to realize that, despite the differences in our artistic practices, or our very different backgrounds — me growing up on the outskirts of Lisbon in Portugal and Aidan at the foot of Slieve Gullion in Northern Ireland — our approach to field recording was strikingly similar, it came from a place of curiosity and care.

Field recording is still often perceived as a solo activity, typically involving recordists — often men with very expensive equipment — spending time in remote exotic locations, quietly listening. The weight of a romantic approach to recording is still heavy and very much felt today. To a certain extent, I can understand why it’s considered a solitary practice — listening to the world, through the amplified sounds of a microphone (or sensor) with your headphones on is a deeply personal experience. But we were interested in sensing collaboratively: for four years, we worked closely on every decision we made and recorded places familiar to us — we spent a lot of time getting to know them a bit deeper and through sound. It was fun, shared, spontaneous, sensorial and full of experimentation. We were expanding our perception of the recorded locations around Northern Ireland and meanwhile also our relationship as friends.

After a few conversations, we enthusiastically decided to schedule our first recording session together. The question now was where to start. We were keen on introducing our Belfast to each other. As I was already recording for a project along the River Lagan Towpath, leading to the Lagan Meadows, this made things easy; I just needed to extend my recording sessions to accommodate working with Aidan. We had very little money and equipment, so we often borrowed some from SARC to ensure we had the same specs. It was high-quality, stereo, clunky and very heavy. Nevertheless, we recorded aimlessly for something like four months on the same location in the Lagan Towpath.

We intuitively started walking and recording weekly, changing the time of the day and the day of the week. Time was flexible and it was exciting to really engage with a place collaboratively through sound. It was hard to explain, but we were not particularly interested in explaining. We continued recording/sensing until an open call for works by the project Household Belfast came about. Aidan emailed me ‘Shall we?’.

And that was it, we were a field recording duo and now we needed a name. After much consideration, we settled on bunú, which means “foundation” in Irish. It felt right. The next step was a shift. How do we move on from an incredibly exploratory, physical and multi-sensorial journey? Up until then, it had all been about fun long walks, getting to know each other, while deeply and collaboratively engaging with a place. But by taking part in the open call, we were about to formalize the recordings within some kind of framework — no matter how open that framework was going to be. From the very beginning, we agreed that whatever the chosen approach, it had to focus on our time together, deeply engaged, in the Lagan Towpath. It was also important that whatever we created together would not be part of our PhDs. This later decision in particular freed us. It allowed us to let go of personal aesthetics and conceptual ties with particular theoretical frameworks and quite naturally, find a shared language. It was a compromise for both of us, but we navigated the constraints easily, as we both felt represented in the final result. One of the good things about a rich collaboration is that the less interesting or weaker aspects of the process are easily put aside.

For his next stage, we pretty much spent most of our time in one of the surround sound studios at SARC. Listening back to the recordings took ages as we attentively heard each and every file from beginning to end, with no exceptions. Each session began with a strong cup of coffee and often turned into a full day spent in the studio, revisiting the recordings or reflecting on our time in the Lagan Towpath. It was long and tiring, but also such a fun process. No matter how much we complained at the start of the day, it all faded away once we began working and making decisions together. At the end of each session, we’d always compare thoughts and notes. These were oddly and consistently aligned, although expressed in slightly different ways, because we are after all, different persons. This, invariably, remained the approach to our studio work for the next four years.

As expected, things changed when we were out and about recording. Our practice evolved over time. Along the way, we also began questioning how we approached presence — both our own and that of those we encountered. And while our language remained similar, the vocabulary expanded as we slightly increased the quality of our equipment, thanks to the generous support of the Arts Council Northern Ireland. While technology was never the focus in our personal practices — I don’t think it should ever be — there are times when it can help express what you need to say. We also began to experiment more, gradually incorporating textural recordings using extended techniques like contact microphones, hydrophones, electromagnetic sensors and a VLF antenna also known as natural radio (listen to some examples here).

We started by purchasing the same recorder, a Fostex FR-2LE stereo field recorder, which, with recent technological advancements, now feels nearly prehistoric. We paired it with a pair of Røde NT5 microphones and a Røde stereo bar (both of which I still use). Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough funds for wind protection, so we turned to a few YouTube tutorials and built our own using bird feeders and some fake fur. The result was clumsy, awkward to use and sometimes painful, but it did the job.

We couldn’t find images of our setups. It seems that all the juicy bits are not documented in photographs and I find this strangely liberating.

With this setup, we were able to record the same location from two slightly different perspectives, making it easier and richer to create immersive work. The work was usually presented as a 4-channel installation or in multiple-channel live listening sessions. Again, with today’s technological changes, it is possible to do something similar with less effort, but the process would be very different, that’s for sure.

Time was always a crucial element in our work. We took the time to walk, listen both with and without microphones, and deeply engage with each of the locations. We recorded each place for long periods, allowing the environment to unfold. In the studio, we spent countless hours listening back, revisiting recordings, and discovering new, unexpected details that had gone unnoticed during the recording session and in the initial listening sessions. Sonic events in the compositions, too, required time to evolve. The final result was consistently immersive and long-form, encouraging listeners to engage deeply with the work, inviting them to sit with it and often discuss their thoughts at the end. Our work was uniquely ours, even if it wasn’t groundbreaking.

Our shortest work, On or Under the Surface of Land (16 minutes), stood apart in its approach and is perhaps my personal favorite. Maybe because it is more exploratory and resonates with my own aesthetic interests — it’s hazy, elusive and you can’t quite pin down where you are, yet it still feels undeniably Belfast. It also has the best title of them all. The work was conceptualised for and performed live at Unrehearsed — An Evening Full of Sound, an event curated by Tullis Rennie for the Sonorities Festival 2015 in Belfast. Rather than focusing on a single, slowly evolving location, we curated a collection of textural recordings from Belfast, each drawn from our personal archives and evoking a similar atmosphere. These recordings were layered in a spontaneous, improvisational manner, creating a distinct sonic experience:

On or Under the Surface of Land suggests a subtle shift in practice: from fixed to live, from predetermination to intervention. This evolution is slow and cautious, reflected in the treatment of the sound material. Changes in texture and intensity are explored slowly over the duration, blending minimal environments and hinting at the patient listening process involved in field recording.

All in all, our practice didn’t quite align with the fast-paced world we inhabit. It involved a multi-sensory exploration of places nearby, recorded over long periods of time — four to eight months — only to present the works, in most cases, once only. We were not so much interested in the result, but the process, I guess. As time went on and our lives grew more complex, we naturally drifted away from recording and composing collaboratively, just as we had once begun. Yet, the works endure, as does our friendship.

Promotion was never our strong suit; a few years ago we organised our back catalogue and created a Bandcamp page, but simply forgot to share it. We did stereo mixes of the multi-channel installations and listening sessions to create four digital albums, Belfast Lough (2017), On or Under the Surface of Land (2015), Slieve Gullion (2015) and Lough Foyle (2013). We also added to the Bandcamp page links to two other works released by Sonic Terrain: Correspondence (2014) and Lagan: Behind (2013). So, if you have a (long) moment… grab your headphones, take a breath and listen!

bunú on Bandcamp

In October 2024 I released my latest album Loop. And Again. with the experimental music label Crónica (Porto, Portugal). The album explores the concepts of time and repetition, and what surfaces when we give these two things some breathing space. This project has been a long time in the making and has had several lives, but creative processes aren’t usually clean cut, definite and finite. And some just don’t aim to be any of that, they just follow you. This is one of them.

In 2012 I moved to Belfast to do a PhD on critical listening methods using field recordings. I know, right? I was then, and still am, very interested in extended field recording techniques — potentially a new terminology for some of you. These are recording techniques that allow us to expand the horizon of our listening experiences to include sounds that exist at the verge of human perception, or sounds that exist beyond the human hearing range. These sounds can be recorded using microphones and sensors such as hydrophones (underwater movements and ecologies), contact microphones (vibrations of surfaces, a material form of listening), geophones (movements and ecologies underground), electromagnetic sensors (as the name suggests, sensing electromagnetic frequencies). There are more of course but, you get the idea. These microphones offer a rich, tactile listening experiences, allowing us to feel the subtle vibrations of unnoticed or unheard sounds.

Listening to the world using such technologies allows me to be humbled, to understand how much the world entails and how much of this eludes me. What I perceive of the world is, after all, determined by my anatomy (hearing range), context and my own personal history. So no matter how much I know about a place, my perception of that place is always affected when a listening experience is complemented by extended techniques.

Anyway, back to Belfast. The city of Belfast has a complex history, with 30 years of conflict — known to many as The Troubles — that ended in 1998 (this article is an interesting long read about the Troubles and its complexities). It was all new to me, so what better way to learn more about the intricate Belfast than to develop a participatory project that would allow me to start informal and unplanned conversations with people and set me on a broader path?; dive deeper, step outside the academic ‘bubble’ and prompt me to engage with parts of the city I probably wouldn’t otherwise get to know and people I wouldn’t otherwise meet? That’s how X Marks the Spot emerged.

There isn’t always a lot of humour in sound art and I wanted this project, although somewhat complex and nuanced, to be a simple and fun activity for those who came across it. I often describe the project as a multimodal, playful and very slow relational mapping project using sound; it is a long description, but somehow it works. It was a slow process that involved random and unpredictable engagements with people. It was about sound and about disrupting prescribed and hierarchical ways of perceiving, and engaging with cities. I started the project by inviting people to tag specific telecommunication boxes, but only those that emitted an audible drone (a continuous hum). Since not all boxes produce a continuous sound, the activity took on a game-like quality. The idea was to suggest alternative ways of navigating the city of Belfast by listening for these drones. The open invitation spread by word of mouth and roughly suggested the following:

Tell me the location of the box and indicate if the box was spotted by chance or it is located in a familiar place; describe the area around the box; and what was the time and date that the box was spotted.

After having these details, I would either walk or cycle to each location and follow a systematic recording process that involved recording the sound of the telecommunication box using the same contact microphones; analysing this recording to note the main frequencies and amplitudes that compose the sound; using an electromagnetic sensor to search for the changes in the magnetic field generated by the box and record a short creative exploration of these pulses; designing a black and white A2 poster with just nine of the main frequencies and amplitudes of the sound recorded with the contact microphone; attaching the poster onto the telecommunication box; photographing the result (suggesting a candid version of the Water Towers work by Ernst and Hilla Becher); constructing an idealised version of each sound; as a thank you to the person who identified the box, creating a short composition that explored the sonic identity of the box drawing from the various types of recordings. The tagging process was documented in a web-archive that contained the photograph and a short sound composition for each box, alongside a small text indicating how the box was found and/or the person’s relation with the place. The web-archive could be accessed through the QR code that could be found on the black and white A2 poster.

The tagging stage of the project was active between 2013 and 2019. During that time, thirty five boxes were spotted and documented. Through X Marks the Spot I was able to start conversations about wandering in a post-conflict city, the importance of attending to what is around us through critical listening and the importance of playfully shifting hierarchies.

The project is three-fold. In addition to the physical installation on the boxes (black and white A2 poster) and the online archive, it has an extended life through its ‘off-site’ projects, where the materials collected during the tagging process are reinterpreted (check out other iterations on the Off-Site section of the X Marks the Spot archive). Loop. And Again. is one of these projects. The project entangles the drones recorded for X Marks the Spot with additional recordings made with two contact microphones and an electromagnetic sensor, recordings of the overall environment where the boxes are located made with a 360˚ ambisonic microphone, recordings of the River Lagan made with two hydrophones and recordings made recently with a smartphone.

Loop. And Again. is a personal journey that sits between multiple musical flows. It is not a representation of my time in Belfast (eight years), or a mirror of the X Marks the Spot project; it has an independent life. The journey begins with Introducing Variables, a track that flows through Belfast, where I chronologically trace the various locations of the tagged boxes, enveloping them in a tangle of drones. The journey continues with Magnetic Fields, a more exploratory and tactile track that delves into the electromagnetic fields surrounding these architectures, created through generative loops. The album culminates with a granular exploration of the key frequencies of one of the boxes, Cross Parade. This track also references the social aspects of X Marks the Spot, incorporating more recent recordings from my time with my friends Fingal, Bronagh and Paul that live nearby the Cross Parade box. It also includes several trombone improvisations by Tullis Rennie — a great musician, improvisor and a dear friend — who also used to live in Belfast and mapped the Cross Parade box for X Marks the Spot a decade ago.

The album is part social experiment, part sonic ecology, part environmental sound and part buzzing, drifting ambience. It should get the rest of the world listening to Belfast, too. (Bandcamp)

The field recordings collected during X Marks the Spot and the way they were selected, processed, set alongside new recordings and layered again and again to compose the album, seek to create partial granular sensory reflections. They flow throughout the album’s three tracks; they also appear in various processed forms and act as the foundation for generative loops. The album is suggestive and tactile, and doesn’t attempt to explain complex relational processes. It collects ghosts of my years of delving into the dynamics of magnetic fields, intricate wiring arrangements and their interconnectedness to changes in the surrounding landscape. It honours these ordinary objects that are part of the invisible fabric of the city by inviting us to listen to their materiality in great detail. Through this attentive shift in perspective and scale, I invite the listener to challenge what they perceive as sonic vibrations in the urban environment. This journey does not have a start and an end point but instead, it flows back and forth through time.

This isn’t just a passive listening experience; Meireles composes with recordings from contact microphones, an electromagnetic sensor, and ambisonic and hydrophone recordings of the River Lagan, crafting an experience that feels less like a piece of music and more like a meditation on modern cities’ hidden life. (Chain D.L.K.)