This May the University of Salford Art Collection, in collaboration with Sounds from the Other City, presented two spectacular new artworks to the festival line-up. Our Ears Sometimes Sing to Us by Lola de la Mata was a work spanning across performance, installation, and exhibition which explores the sensory and mechanical elements of the ear and hearing. From The Edges: Salford’s Hidden Landscapes by Andrew Brooks and Simon Connor was an immersive audiovisual installation which uncovers the shifting spaces in which Salford’s urban edges meet its green and wild landscapes.
Throughout the day, amongst the vibrant buzz of the festival, attendees were invited to encounter the two innovative and immersive art installations.
Lola de la Mata performing with a friction harp as part of Our Ears Sometimes Sing to Us. Image courtesy of Lizzie King.
Our Ears Sometimes Sing to Us unfolded in the University of Salford’s Acoustics Laboratories, making full use of the state of the art facilities by creating an immersive artwork that works in tune across the varying sonic environments.
The experience began and ended in the Listening Room with a pop up exhibition by Lola de la Mata including recordings from within the ear alongside photograms, photographs and objects made while collaborating with the Hudspeth Laboratory of Sensory Cells and Neurology at The Rockefeller University in New York.
Guests were then invited into the Anechoic Chamber to try Deep Listening; the audience were asked to collectively listen for and visualise the myriad of sounds, songs and murmurs others hear.
The audience then moved to the Reverb Chamber to experience an acoustic bow and air performance accompanied by a metal friction harp and singing in the frequencies found in Lola’s ears.
This is our third collaboration with Dr. Danny Wong-McSweeny, Head of The Centre for Acoustics of the Built Environment. It allows us to spotlight and utilise the University’s excellent facilities, whilst pushing the boundaries of how and where art is experienced.
From The Edges: Salford’s Hidden Landscapes was screened in the New Adelphi Band Room. This was our first time using our unique facilities in New Adelphi for Sounds from the Other City and an opportunity to showcase the home of the University’s School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology!
From the Edges, by Andrew Brooks and Simon Connor was a three-channel video display with 360 degree, immersive audio technology . Visitors were enveloped in the sounds and visuals of Salford’s green spaces as they border and consume the urban landscapes of our city’s past and present.
Brooks and Connor used multi-camera systems and spatial field recording techniques this winter and spring in the Salford nature reserves of Kersal Dale, Clifton Country Park, and Cadishead & Little Woolden Moss. Audiences were immersed in these environments through multiple visual perspectives and the soundtrack, which wove environmental recordings with original instrumental composition.
After the screenings, audiences had the chance to discuss with the work with the artists.
2026’s instalment of Sounds from the City has been a great success, and we have been delighted to take part and to share the works of three talented artists. We would like to thank the teams behind the facilities at New Adelphi and the Acoustic Laboratories, the staff and volunteers at Sounds from the Other City, as well as the artists themselves.
Until next year!