Auris Sound Art Festival

Manchester’s never had a festival dedicated entirely to sound art, but that changes this October with the debut of Auris, bringing three days of installation, performance, spatial audio, talks, workshops, soundwalks and film screenings across four city centre venues.

The programme features some of the most acclaimed voices in the art form. Francisco López has spent more than four decades as one of the major figures in sound art, presenting acousmatic performances and installations at museums, galleries and festivals across the world. Nik Colk Void, known for her work with Factory Floor and Carter Tutti Void, also has an impressive reputation in experimental shapeshifting, presenting solo and collaborative work at the Barbican, Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou.

Most musicians who develop tinnitus treat it as an occupational hazard. Lola de la Mata treats it as raw material, using her custom-built Tacet Friction Harp to translate the frequencies inside her own ear into something an audience can hear. Similarly, field recordist Jez riley French focuses on drawing out sounds beyond the range of everyday attention, while Ryoko Akama presents an intimate, durational, object-based performance rooted in her minimalist approach to composition. Closing things out on a local note, Manchester duo WEȽ∝KER AKA Guillaume Dujat and Joe Beedles forge turbulent live set out of computer music, strobes and… balloons.

There’s a participatory strand running through the festival, too. Foley Nights, led by Modus Arts, invites audiences to create live Foley for a selection of film clips using everyday materials, while Dorkbot Manchester and KMR Audio’s Paul Lavigne host demonstrations and workshops with live electronic instruments, including a session building soil radios. There’s also a series of soundwalks running alongside the main programme, with local artists including Maya Chowdhry and Hayley Suviste leading on those.

Auris is curated by Vicky Clarke and Wajid Yaseen of Modus Arts, the Manchester and London sound arts organisation behind the festival. Clarke, winner of the 2020 Oram Award for innovation in sound and music technology, presents her own installation T1/2 Half Life as part of the programme, made with artist Kamila Narysheva from recordings taken at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan.

The curators have selected four venues that tell their own stories, each shaped by a history of industry, science and innovation: the Anthony Burgess Foundation’s converted 19th-century mill, SEESAW’s Grade II listed former textile warehouse, the brutalist Renold Building at SISTER, and SODA, Manchester Metropolitan University’s digital arts centre.

It’s a confident opening statement for a festival with no predecessor in the city, and more widely an exciting moment for Manchester as it becomes a destination for this evolving artform. If you’re new to it, Auris presents a great entry point – an accessible showcase of the many ways sound can be experienced.