OFF-AXIS LISTENING
MESH_ARTS & New Ear:: SPATIAL
present
OFF-AXIS LISTENING
20 NOV. to 12 DEC. 2026
Open: Thu, Fri, Sat 1-6 pm
Opening reception: Friday, NOV. 20, 6-9 pm
Featured artists and speakers: Lidiia Griaznova & Sergei Komarov, Daniel Neumann, Michael J. Schumacher, Bryce Hackford, Heidi Neilson, Toby Heys, Lee Gilboa, Tommy Martinez, and Alessia Damiani
Curated by: Isabella Indolfi & Paige King (MESH_ARTS)
With support from CYLAND Audio Archive, and School of Digital Arts - Manchester Metropolitan University
Off-Axis Listening is a collaboration between MESH_ARTS and New Ear:: SPATIAL, bringing together installations, performances, talks, and a participatory workshop that explore spatial dialogs and perception through the medium of sound. Through experimental sound practices, archival material, and idiosyncratic speaker setups, the program approaches listening as an active, spatial process through which environments are continually produced and shifted.
At the center of Off-Axis Listening is the listener, not as a passive recipient of sound, but as an active participant whose movement, attention, and memory shape the experience. Each act of listening reveals different relationships between sound, bodies, artworks, and surroundings. Space becomes something encountered not as a fixed container, but as a dynamic field of relationships.
The exhibition features sound installations by Daniel Neumann, Lidiia Griaznova & Sergei Komarov, Michael J. Schumacher, Bryce Hackford, Heidi Neilson, and Toby Heys.
Daniel Neumann, System/Sculpture — Central to the exhibition, this installation consists of 8 loudspeakers on movable stands (wheels). It functions as a flexible temporary multi-channel sound studio that is activated through presentations, experiments, concerts and exchange around spatial sound composition. This system is arranged in varying constellations, often in unusual configurations, for example placed in relation to the physical architecture, not according to a pre-supposed standard.
Lidiia Griaznova and Sergei Komarov, Long Distance Relay Files — An interactive 73-channel soundscape invites visitors to explore the hidden sounds of obsolete telephone networks and create their own sonic connections. Supported by CYLAND Audio Archive.
Michael J. Schumacher, urMix — An interactive listening system allows visitors to reconnect individual tracks of multitrack recordings, revealing simple, intuitive, new ways to experience music.
Bryce Hackford, Bridge, Custom 1 — A sited audio install integrates (with) the exhibition/space alongside multiple iterative screen-based works. Bryce will also perform a piece composed for the occasion on the 8 channel system as part of the SPATIAL program.
Heidi Neilson, Impractical Antennas — An experimental installation working with collaged antennae; investigating communication, materiality and invisible signals.
Toby Heys, The Aural Architecture of the Bedroom Stasi — Cassette covers, magnetic tape and archival recordings explore the connections between the proliferation of personal recordings, intimacy, and state surveillance. Supported by the School of Digital Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University.
Daniel Neumann’s System/Sculpture features activations by Tommy Martinez, Lee Gilboa, Bryce Hackford, and Alessia Damiani.
Tommy Martinez, Distant Streams: Pacific Strands with performer Jazmin Jazzy Romero — live telematic performance on the exhibition’s temporary multi-channel system.
Alessia Damiani, RE::SIDUAL TRUTH — A mixing board fed only into itself. Nothing else. This is a quadraphonic acousmatic work built entirely from no-input feedback. Commissioned by New Ear:: SPATIAL for the 2026/27 season.
Lee Gilboa — performance of There Were No Such Words in My World (album) and talk Spatial Composition vs. Audio Spatialization.
Bryce Hackford — performs a new composition for the exhibition’s temporary multi-channel system.
The public program includes a workshop by Daniel Neumann about Non-Representational Spatial Sound Composition, an approach to spatial sound that engages in direct relation to the architectural space, uses sound to articulate space, to present space through sound, as opposed to representing sound in space. It is an alternative framework to those standardized systems (Dolby Atmos, Surround Sound, Ambisonics etc.) that are built to represent a certain pre-existing spatiality and aim for transferability from one space to another. Across the first two days, participants will explore how sound moves through and interacts with a physical environment, treating architecture, speakers, and listeners as active elements in the compositional process. On the third day, there will be a public presentation of the pieces developed by the participants.
Link for more info about the workshop
The complete public program will be released soon.