Sound artist Gerard Gormley and violinist Gascia Ouzounian present a live performance that transforms the Barbican Estate into a resonant collaborator. Based on an album by the same name, the live performance documents a process that treats architecture not merely as a container for sound but as an active sonic medium. In Concrete Dreams of Sound, sound is channelled through building materials using contact microphones and vibrational speakers. Sounds were recorded in situ--through concrete, water, air--and subsequently reinserted into those same spaces, creating recursive, site-specific compositions. The work reveals how built materials mediate, filter, and transform sonic energy, proposing a mode of composition that is fundamentally architectural: a practice of listening with and through matter.
The Quietus writes: 'The alternation between voluminous hum and gossamer-thin but rich textures instils a sense of elegant dynamism. The soft background shivers come close to conjuring a transportive experience, making you feel as if you were there, moving from larger to smaller rooms, seeing the light reflected off their windows, while fluttering harmonics and Gascia Ouzounian’s elongated, slithering violin lines follow along.'
Gascia Ouzounian is a violinist and sonic theorist whose performance work explores the spatial and material dimensions of sound. She has performed internationally at venues including Carnegie Hall, Dream House NYC, Modern Art Oxford, Akademie der Künste, Green Man Festival, SAVVY Contemporary, and the Metropolitan Arts Centre Belfast, among others. Her books include Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts (MIT Press) and the forthcoming The Trembling City.
Gerard Gormley is an Irish composer and sound artist whose work investigates the sonic potentials of space, architecture, and place. His practice evolves through experimental processes that engage buildings and sites as active participants in the making of sound, whether by recording and re-sounding their vibrations within them or by transplanting sonic material from one site to another to open up dialogues between spatial and material histories. His work has been presented internationally at venues including the MAC Belfast, Modern Art Oxford, Cannes Festival, Sónar Festival in Spain, the Cube at Virginia Tech, and Sonorities Festival, and has been broadcast on cinema and television across Ireland and the UK.