A big part of Antonia Barnett-McIntosh’s compositional and collaborative process was devising moments of tension, surprise and humour to create communal experiences where spectators were welcomed as participants in the compositional process. This suggested that listening itself was active: audience members were not mere recipients of music as a finished form, but were drawn into a piece’s compositional questions, where listening and spectating could be viewed as forms of composition.

This workshop invited participants to create, compose and experience a sound walk as a group. The session began with sound experiments, with no musical experience necessary, testing ideas, thinking about everyday items and objects as musical instruments, and considering the musicality of everyday speech. Participants then took part in deep listening exercises before venturing out into the streets for a sound walk, ride or roll.

Antonia Barnett-McIntosh (Kāi Tahu) is a composer-performer, sound artist, editor and curator. She collaborates across cross-arts spaces, gently tapping on the borders between speech/music, performance/rehearsal and composition/writing, while juxtaposing the formalities of presentation with the aesthetics of failure. She has collaborated extensively with musicians, dancers, visual artists, poets, theatre-makers and filmmakers.