Re-Synthesis of a Ritual Space

Re-Synthesis of a Ritual Space investigates how sacral acoustics shape modalities of attention and ritual experience, highlighting the role of sound as a mediating force through which spaces of communion are continually reactivated and reinterpreted across time.

Developed through an acoustic analysis of the Chapter House in Durham Cathedral, the work utilises the resonant properties of the nearly thousand-year-old structure to generate slow-evolving sound textures. These textures invite sustained listening and contemplative dwelling, allowing the architecture itself to participate as an active sonic agent rather than a passive container.

Synthesised sound is used to acoustically activate the space, co-producing an audio-visual environment in which authorship is distributed between artist, architecture, and listener. The work considers how the Chapter House, historically a site of monastic governance, collective deliberation, and spoken ritual, has shaped modes of attention through its architecture and acoustics, and how contemporary sound technologies might reactivate these conditions to reimagine practices of communal listening and reflection in the present.

This version of the piece translates the installation into a headphone-based format, preserving its temporal and spatial logic while reconfiguring the site as an intimate, internalised listening environment.

Re-Synthesis of a Ritual Space was commissioned by The Marchus Trust and Idrîsî Ensemble.