Sleepless Wild Rivers is a site-specific installation in development that explores the fluidity and fragmentation of time and memory. In this work, sound becomes sediment, shadow, and tide - a living trace of time’s ceaseless flow and the fractured nature of recollection. Drawing inspiration from Heraclitus’s philosophy of perpetual change, the piece contemplates time not as a linear path, but as an ever-shifting current. One that moves through us, shapes us, and lingers within. It evokes a sense of flux and recurrence, where no moment is ever quite the same.
At the core of the installation are cymbals suspended in space, transformed into resonating bodies through the use of surface exciters. Blending sounds of falling sand, water, voice, and antique clocks resonating through the suspended cymbals, the work inhabits a permeable boundary between external rhythms and the inner perception of time. The cymbal responds uniquely to each sound, altering not just its timbre, but the perceived location of its voice. Some activate a tactile sense of mechanical rhythm, like the inner workings of a clock stirred into motion, while others soften into distant murmurs - whispers drifting through the space, detached from their source.
The installation doesn’t unfold in front of you. As you move through the space, resonances shift and fold around your body. The sound surrounds, hovers, slips past. It asks for slowness, for presence, for an attention to subtle transformation. Each location, whether a narrow corridor, a reverberant water tower, or a church, introduces new acoustic behaviours, shaping both the placement of the cymbals and the listener’s pathway through the space. In each setting, the work becomes a living system, shaped and tuned to its spatial and acoustic context.
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​​​The first version of Sleepless Wild Rivers was composed using Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) and premiered in May 2025 at the WFS Festival, with the Game Of Life system.
Sleepless Wild Rivers
A month later, a small-scale prototype of the spatial system built with suspended, resonating cymbals was presented at the West Gallery in The Hague as part of the Murmur exhibition, inhabiting the length of a narrow corridor.
While the early proofs of concept have revealed the creative potential of the work and the technical feasibility of the idea, the project remains at a crucial conceptual stage, with much yet to be discovered. The current challenge lies in the limitation of resources. My aim is to bring these spatial approaches together, expanding them into an interactive live performance. In this process, the original composition of Sleepless Wild Rivers will grow into a performance set, with new compositions crafted specifically for the large-scale instrument.
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​​In its fullest realisation, the piece will unfold as a layered sonic ecosystem, where performers, resonant cymbals, and virtual sound sources intersect, influence, and respond to one another. Within this environment, the reciprocal dialogue between virtual and physical space will be explored, revealing how past and present are inextricably intertwined.
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