Researcher on UKRI funded project RUDIMENTS: Reflective Understanding of Digital Instruments as Musical Entanglements. Developing a critical design practice that takes a bottom-up approach to the design of musical instruments; centering the activity of listening, attending to pre-reflective sensory experience, and fostering a childlike curiosity into sonic phenomena.

Although technologically simple, installations in the sound art tradition - through the simple arrangement of speakers in space - produce rich sensory experience. There are no sensors, mappings, or feedback loops, yet they may be perceived as interactive due to the close entanglement of the listener with sound. Enacted across the disciplines of sound art and human-computer interaction (HCI), this PhD project examined that phenomenon; how do sound installations work? How might sonic entanglement inform the design of an interactive artwork? How is it experienced? And, given that the activity of listening is perceptual, how might it be articulated using qualitative research methods?

To begin addressing these questions, a preliminary interview study was conducted with sound installation artists to examine site-specific design processes. A novel ultrasonic technology was then developed that harnesses listener entanglement with sound as the source of interactive effects. Two sound installation artworks were created using this technology and employed as research probes in three subsequent studies exploying qualitative methods to examine listener behaviour and its mediation by social and material factors. Key contributions include provocations for HCI to recognise facets of interactive experience that become illuminated through an orientation to the sonic and challenge disciplinary conventions.

The project was completed under the supervision of Professor Andrew McPherson and Professor Nick Bryan-Kinns. It was examined by Dr Sarah Fdili-Alaoui and Dr Anna Xambo in 2025. It was funded by the UKRI Media and Arts Technology Centre for Doctoral Training.