Posts tagged: From The Other

Experiencing ‘From The River’s Mouth’

In May 2025 our Artist in Residence at the University of Salford Acoustic Labs, Hayley Suviste, presented a 3-part installation as part of Sounds From The Other City. Artist Lizzie King shares her experience of From The River’s Mouth below.


A growing amount of rivers have been granted the legal status of personhood, a legal right to flow, a way for rivers to be protected and a way for them to be honoured.  In her installation “From the River’s Mouth’ Hayley Suviste gives the audience a unique way to connect with the River Irwell meeting it at its Salford stretch.  The Irwell is a life source that runs 63 km. Many sound artists have previously explored rivers through their horizontal journey, however Suviste gives us the opportunity to experience the Irwell through a series of vertical interactions.  As the work progresses down the layers of the Irwell we encounter the perspectives of past, present, and future. 

‘From the River’s Mouth,’ makes use of three sonically distinct rooms to explore three different parts of the Irwell’s being and of its timeline. 


Anechoic Chamber
Photographed by William Rowe

We, the audience, are guided into a dark room lit with one blue light and a bouncy floor, the anechoic chamber.  Silence. You feel yourself swaying with the movement of other people until everyone goes still. 

It feels like being in the centre of rushing whirlpool, the sounds move around you gushing and gurgling.   Distant sounds of ducks pitter in the background. The gushing dissipates into trickles, a pleasant tonal sound appears feeling like it is coming from a distance.  The river’s life dances around the audience.  The gurgling and murmurs transport me under the water, I want to sit and drink it in.  It lulls the audience bringing a tranquility and a feeling that is almost tactile of having met the Irwell. As I am wishing to drift off with the river 4 minutes is up, the door opens, the sounds stop, we leave for the next room.


The Listening Room
Photographed by William Rowe

The next room we sit in is the listening room.  Filled with sofas, bean bags, and 124 speakers, we take a comfortable seat.  Projected onto a large screen in front are two videos side by side.  One shows us the most vivid blue colours running in the water and the other the pungent orange of the sediment from the bank.  We are introduced to a series of fixed frame videos showing different scenes from the river bank. The sound of the river is different this time we are alongside it, hearing noises all around us as if we were sat by the Irwell itself. We see and hear the geese who inhabit this stretch alongside the vivid colours and textures which really are worth celebrating.  This time the Irwell bables and tinkles it has a gentler quality now that we are aside it rather than inside it, a loop of synthesised melodies accompany the waters flow.  Two different angles of a red balloon caught on branches.   The sound of Reggie being called in the distance, a runaway dog.  It is an experience that we are more familiar with but one that our attention may not often focus on.  A woman singing a folk song drifts in from the left, again we are lulled as tonal loops intermingle with the river’s tinkling.  Until the film comes to an end I like other audience members are reluctant to get up from our seats.


We step over and into the next darkened room, the reverberation room, where we sit in a semi-circle.  Facing us is a bowl which is lit up from three different angles projecting the water onto the floor in petal like sections.  The rush of a full river gulps in towards us in deep bass tones.  These rumblings make the water dance creating cymatic patterns which are projected in segments onto the floor dancing and swirling around.  They are completely captivating as the sounds again surround us from different points in the room; it is reminiscent of walking along the river and standing under the bridge watching the water’s reflections bounce and flitter on the concrete structure above.  A clarinet echoes the folk song from the previous room and we hear the familiar sounds that played in the last room start to trickle out.   Though deep and bassy in a room that reverberates, the sound feels light and free. The whirling and twirling of the water’s reflections leave us captivated till the final moment.

Close-up in the Reverberation Chamber
Photographed by William Rowe

Hayley Suviste has been resident at the University of Salford Acoustic laboratory carrying out a commission to look at the environment.  Suviste a composer and sound artist has placed the audience in a series of situations which leave you questioning your own relationship to the river.  Many of these left the audience in a sense of calm or entrancement, do we spend this same time at the River Irwell?  As this series looks at a sense of passing of time in the rivers life it also questions what the river’s life should look like and what part do our lives play in that? 

This performance took place multiple times on 4th May, 2025 as part of Sounds of the City Festival.  In the midst of a pulsating, hectic, jubilant atmosphere there was this pocket of quiet, of calm, and of contemplation.  In the midst of a party Suviste opened up a type of gulf in which we were able to connect with who we are and who the River Irwell is.


Another artist friend of ours Fiona Sinéad Brehony has written about their own experience of Suviste’s From The River’s Mouth – which you can also read below:



Opportunity: Samarbeta Open Call Residency in response to Hybrid Futures

Opportunity Samarbeta Open Call Residency

Responding to the Hybrid Futures Exhibition at Salford Museum & Art Gallery
DEADLINE: 5pm, 15th July 2024.
Click here to apply.

We are excited to share a new open call opportunity for musicians to respond to the Hybrid Futures exhibition at Salford Museum and Art Gallery. The exhibition is the culmination of a three-year project consisting of a series of exhibitions across the North West of England featuring new work and commissions by visual artists Shezad Dawood, Jessica El Mal, Parham Ghalamdar and RA Walden that address the urgent thematic focus of climate change. Hybrid Futures is a partnership between Castlefield Gallery Manchester; Grundy Art Gallery Blackpool; Touchstones Rochdale; University of Salford Art Collection; and Shezad Dawood Studio, exploring collective and more sustainable ways of working that will influence how the partnership commissions, exhibits and collects new work by visual artists to benefit and be more relevant to their audiences, now and in the future.

Graphic representing the Open Call. Text reads: SBR022 Open Call Samarbeta Music Residency Responding to the Hybrid Futures Exhibition

This open call is looking for a musician(s) to respond to the Hybrid Futures themes and/or work created by the visual artists, to create a new live presentation to be premiered in Salford Museum and Art Gallery on the opening night of Fat Out Fest.

How to apply:

To read the full information about the opportunity and application process, click here to visit the Samarbeta website.


This opportunity is co-commissioned by Samarbeta, IKLECTIK and Hybrid Futures.

Samarbeta is an artist-led music residency program that exists to offer musicians the time and space away from everyday constraints to produce new and exciting work that otherwise would never be able to be realised. Its meaning is ‘to collaborate’ but this is not a stipulation of each residency. Since forming in 2014 we have worked with musicians such as Lydia Lunch, Moon Duo, Charles Hayward, Stealing Sheep, Ex Easter Island Head, DRS, Laura Cannell, BBC Philharmonic & Thurston Moore.

Founded in 2014, IKLECTIK is a nonprofit creative organisation based in London. IKLECTIK focuses on experimentation within sound, art, new media, emerging technologies and cross disciplinary works. Their research initiatives and collaborations with academic institutions inform our curation and event selection. Through this, they explore processes and techniques whilst addressing social, political and cultural issues

Hybrid Futures, a multi-part collaboration focusing on climate, sustainability, collaborative learning and co-production between Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, Touchstones Rochdale, University of Salford Art Collection and Shezad Dawood Studio, and generously supported by Arts Council England and Art Fund with additional funding from Henry Moore Foundation.

SAMARBETA Logo
IKLECTIK Logo
Hybrid Futures Logo