Natasha Barrett creates three-dimensional soundscapes. The artist, who was born in the United Kingdom and now lives in Norway, uses two speaker prototypes that precisely bundle the sound waves and transmit them onto surrounding surfaces. The reflected sounds form a 3D soundscape in which familiar environments are experienced in a completely new way. Barrett muses: “Why travel around the world when there are mysterious sounds all around us—and what’s more, when we are subject to acoustic illusions in our everyday lives?” She focuses our ears on sounds and noises that we pass by or fail to hear—sounds that our busy senses tune out as irrelevant.

Her site-specific installation Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces is part of the project Reconfiguring the Landscape, which aims to establish a new awareness of our environment. Using a high-definition 3D microphone, she captures the sound field of the public space in Graz and breaks it down analytically. She then amplifies the unheard sounds and reassembles all the components. The inaudible becomes audible; putatively ambient sounds become an exciting, dynamic event.

Composition, idea: Natasha Barrett