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Curiosity, Play, Innovation: International Computer Music Conference Installations at Emerson
June 11 – June 14
Emerson Contemporary has joined hands with the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), one of the world’s largest and most prestigious gatherings of sound artists, electroacoustic composers, and music technologists from across the globe.
This year, the installation track of ICMC 2025 received 56 submissions from artists and researchers across 12 countries, showcasing the expanding boundaries of sound art and interactive media. These installations will be on display at Emerson Contemporary’s Media Art Gallery from June 11th – 14th.
In alignment with this year’s theme of “Curiosity, Play, Innovation,” we accepted 19 installations that transform Emerson College’s Media Art Gallery and Bright Family Screening Room into laboratories of sonic exploration. The selected works span a rich spectrum of approaches—from immersive audiovisual environments and interactive sound sculptures to spatial audio experiences and video installations—each pushing the envelope of how we experience and interact with sound in physical space.
Particularly noteworthy is the diversity of artistic practices represented, with creators employing everything from AI-driven systems and sensor-based interactions to acoustic phenomena and architectural resonances. Many works exemplify the democratization of technology that David Wessel championed, utilizing accessible tools and gallery-provided equipment to ensure that innovative artistic expression isn’t limited by resource constraints. These installations invite participants to move beyond traditional concert hall experiences and engage with sound as a sculptural, architectural, and deeply interactive medium, and feature work by Michael Trommer, Jane Tingley, Zhitao Lin, William Turner Duffin, Tak Cheung Hui, Matthew Ostrowski, Matthew Azevedo, Shomit Barua, Betsey Biggs.
Read more about the ICMC schedule of installations and screenings right here, or about the installations at the Emerson Contemporary Gallery below.
Contained by Michael Trommer
Contained presents a sonic auscultation of our Anthropocentric milieu, integrating
field recordings, 360o camera footage and 3D scans of urban corporate towers,
logistical networks, industrial areas and other non-places [1] as well as urban
encampments and derelict locales that are resonant with both the heard and
unheard acoustic emanations of the technotope we have become dependent upon
for our survival. In doing so, it approaches sound as a material that can be
apprehended as both corporeal and abstracted: in addition to the airborne, audible
sound of the subject spaces, Contained integrates the electrical, vibrational and
mnemonic emissions that permeate our everyday habitats, highlighting their roles
as unheeded yet nonetheless deeply affective components of a quotidian and
contingent soundscape.
Michael Trommer is a Toronto-based sound and video artist; his practice has been
focused primarily on psychogeographical and acoustemological explorations of
anthropocentric space via the use of spatial and tactile sound, field recordings,
VR, immersive installation and expanded cinema.
Entrainment by Shomit Barua
Entrainment is part of a series of phenomenological experiments that explore the
theme of spatial and temporal disorientation. Inspired by the passing landscape
viewed from subways and trains, this audio-video installation employs several
motion-based perceptual distortions: 1) the Doppler effect, 2) Moiré interference
patterns, 3) skewed parallax (binocular disparity), and 4) the Wagon wheel effect.
Entrainment refers to the synchronization of organisms to an external perceived
rhythm.
Shomit Barua is a Japanese-born, Desi-American intermedia artist specializing in
ecoacoustics, responsive environments, and emergent narratives. His work is rooted
in poetry and architecture, and reflects the shared tenets of contained space,
economy of materials, and movement that is both physical and emotional.
Combining everyday technologies with esoteric programming languages, he blurs
the line between installation and performance, weaving together object, sound and
image. Digital and analog techniques are fused to investigate his core subject:
corporeal presence in a physical space.
Foresta-Inclusive: (ex)tending towards by Jane Tingley
(ex)tending towards is driven by sensor data collected using the Foresta-Inclusive
infrastructure at the rare Charitable Reserve in Blaire, ON. CA. This infrastructure
includes three networked ecosensors that are installed unobtrusively onto the trunk of a
tree and sense phenomenon such as: temperature, humidity, VOCs, particulate matter,
wind, C02 and rain. The in-gallery installation is composed of three main components: 1)
a visualization that images 24hrs of collected data, where the outer ring shows
contemporary values and each subsequent smaller ring images the values from the
previous hour, 2) a point cloud of the tree being sensed, and 3) the soundscape that
sonifies the collected data.
Jane Tingley is an artist, curator, director of the SLOlab (Systems | Life | Ontologies) and
Associate Professor at York University. Her studio work combines traditional studio
practice with new media tools – and spans responsive/interactive installation,
performative robotics, and telematically connected distributed sculptures/installations.
the ground beneath our feet, the air inside our lungs by Matthew Azevedo
the ground beneath our feet, the air inside our lungs explores the deep, inviolable
connections between seemingly independent individuals. Visitors are invited to sit
in cocoon-like hammock chairs where they will experience an infrasonic
generative composition presented via tactile transducers built into the chair’s
frame. The composition’s development is primarily directed by the visitor’s heart
and respiratory rate, which are monitored via a millimeter-wave radar sensor.
While in this seemingly isolated state, the visitor’s experience is continuously
shaped by the sensor data from nearby hammocks and activity throughout the
space monitored by a seismic accelerometer mounted to the floor.
M. Azevedo (b. 1977) is an artist, educator, and researcher based in Providence,
RI whose work is focused on the outer edges of human perception, in particular
the liminal space between touch and hearing occupied by infrasound. They are
most widely known for their recorded works and international performances as
Retribution Body, composing site-specific works for architectural spaces driven
into resonance by massive custom subwoofers.
Liminal by Zhitao Lin
Liminal is an AI-driven audiovisual installation by Zhitao Lin that transforms tra-
ditional Chinese aesthetics into a generative, interactive experience. Inspired by the mythical Peach Blossom Spring, the piece uses real-time gesture tracking to control the sound of Guqin, Xiao, and percussion, along with dynamic digital ink landscapes rendered as 3D particle systems. Only one audience member is tracked at a time, allowing for a focused and intimate interaction. Each motion becomes a brushstroke in both sound and image, creating a deeply personal and ephemeral version of this imagined utopia.
Image by Zhitao Lin.
Zhitao Lin is a forward-thinking composer whose work bridges traditional Chinese
aesthetics, spectral music, and cutting-edge technology. Currently a Doctor of
Musical Arts (DMA) candidate in Composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns
Hopkins University, he also holds a Master’s degree in Composition from Peabody
and a Bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of California, Berkeley. His
research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence and music
composition, exploring new possibilities in sound art through deep technological
integration.
MELT: the memory of ice by Betsey Biggs
MELT: the memory of ice (topographic remix) is a spatial remix of my music-film MELT: the
memory of ice, an invitation to sit bedside in communion with our earth’s body melting and
spilling through climate change. Created during a summer spent in Greenland with my mother and 5-year-old, the installation creates a spectacular, otherworldly, immersive river of icebergs, increasingly interrupted by flashes of memories of the north. A musical drone rich with glimmers of sound — calving ice, reindeer bells, sled dogs — surrounds a choir reciting an unfathomable list of winter’s loss — flurries, orca, snow angels. The transformation and relocation of the film’s sounds and images opens up a new, imaginative space for the audience to sit with and wander through, a kind of inner topography of the north. The ice melts on.
Betsey Biggs (Writer/Director/Composer) is a composer and media artist whose work
connects the dots between sound, image, place and technology. Her work has been described by the New Yorker as “psychologically complex, exposing how we orient ourselves with our ears.” For more than twenty-five years, she has composed music, created live multimedia performances, and created participatory art installations.
Rings…Through Rings by Tak Cheung Hui and Xiaoqiao Li
Rings. . . Through Rings transforms historical military cartography of Hong Kong into an immersive sound installation, where laser-etched vinyl discs—each encoding geographical data—are physically manipulated by participants. These custom turntable-based artifacts translate map engravings into sonic textures, generating evolving soundscapes that
reflect the landscape’s temporal shifts. Through real-time audiovisual processing, users explore the dynamic interplay between natural topographies, human intervention, and technological mediation, experiencing history through physical engagement and spatial listening.
HUI Tak-Cheung, a Hong Kong-born composer, creates works spanning chamber and orchestral music, electronic pieces, sound installations, and interdisciplinary projects. His multidisciplinary approach integrates immersive audio, spatial sound, and advanced music technologies to reconstruct soundscapes and tell stories across eras and cultures.
Xiaoqiao Li is an artist, academic, and researcher whose work examines the intersection of analogue imprints and digital imprints, particularly in analysing digital print matrices. Li’s practice-based approach sheds light on the complexities of printmaking in the digital era by investigating how digital imaging information is captured, retained, lost, and transmitted. Li holds a BA in Visual Arts from Macao Polytechnic University, an MA in Visual Arts: Printmaking from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and a PhD from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, supported by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme. His PhD thesis was selected by the Leonardo Graduate Abstracts (LGA) Peer Review Committee as a top-rated LABS Abstract for advanced research in Art and Science, published by Leonardo (MIT Press Journals). Li’s work has been exhibited internationally, earning accolades such as the Clifford Chance Purchase Prize (UK) and the Chinese Young Artists’ Work Award at the Beijing International Art Biennale. Beyond his studio practice, Li actively contributes to academia through presentations at conferences and articles published in the IMPACT Printmaking Journal and Leonardo (MIT Press), fostering dialogue among artists and scholars in both traditional printmaking and digital art. As he continues to learn and grow, Li hopes that his continuous efforts will contribute to evolving discussions in the field.
Summerland by Matthew Ostrowski
Summerland explores the intersection of the technical and the mystical at the
dawn of the electrical age. Morse code sounders are driven by texts from from
two critical figures in early long-distance communication: Samuel Morse himself,
the telegraph’s inventor, and Spiritualist medium Kate Fox, who communicated
with the dead through a ‘spiritual telegraph.’ Excerpts from Morse’s writings are
translated into the code that bears his name, and 21st-century analysis/synthesis
techniques are used in a futile attempt to resynthesize recorded transcripts of
Fox’s sessions with the beyond using 19th-century means.
A New York City native, Matthew Ostrowski is a composer, performer, and installation artist. Using digital tools and formalist techniques to engage with quotidian materials: sonic, physical, and cultural; Ostrowski explores the liminal space between the virtual and phenomenological worlds. Engaged with tropes of interruption and flux, his works function as environments in a constant state of change, exploring the process of consciousness in its constant state of collision with the world.
