Sound Art, Moving Image, Field Recording
Hayley’s practice is grounded in listening — to people, environments, and the stories and memories they hold. She works with oral histories, field recordings, and moving image, gathered through her own practice, community workshops, or drawn from archival sources. From these materials, she weaves sonic and visual worlds through installation, live performance, and long-form audio-visual and radiophonic work. Often using multi-channel and ambisonic sound, she creates environments that place the listener within them, where quieter details come into focus.
She is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at the University of Manchester’s NOVARS Research Centre, funded by the NWCDTP. Her research explores oral histories as compositional material, alongside the ethical considerations of working with recorded voices in sound-based practice, including engagement with her own family histories and collaborative methods.
She has received commissions from Sounds from the Other City, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, North West Sound Heritage, New Substance, Olympias Music Foundation, and Quays Culture/MediaCityUK/Mediale, for which she collaborated with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. She has been artist in residence at Maajaam (Estonia), Elektronmusikstudion EMS (Sweden), Forestry England, the University of Salford Acoustic Laboratories, The Glasshouse International Centre for Music (Newcastle, UK), and Yorkshire Sound Women Network (University of Hull’s Ambisonic Studio). Her live performances have been presented at venues and festivals across the UK and internationally.
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❋ From the River’s Mouth (2025)
From the River’s Mouth (2025) is a sound installation created during an artist residency at the University of Salford’s Acoustics Laboratories in early 2025, in partnership with From The Other and the University of Salford Art Collection. Premiered at Sounds from the Other City 2025, the work explores the River Irwell through spatialised sound, moving image, and field recordings, and will join the University’s permanent art collection.
The installation was presented across three distinct rooms in the labatories, each utilising different acoustic environments and technology.
❋ In the Shallows (anechoic chamber) was composed entirely of underwater recordings captured with hydrophones submerged in the Irwell. Projected through a 12-channel speaker array in the total silence of the chamber, this room offers an intimate listening experience—revealing the river’s hidden, subaquatic world - from the loud, ever-present hum of the city below the surface to the crackling, hissing, and popping effervescence of life in the Kersal Wetlands.
❋ At the River’s Edge (listening room) shifts from underwater to the surface of the river. Using a 112-channel Wave Field Synthesis rig and 8 additional spatialised channels, this room presents field recordings and footage captured along the river’s banks.
❋ Outflow (reverberation room) features 7-channel audio paired with cymatic water projections. In this space, sound frequencies vibrate the water, generating dynamic, real-time patterns that are synchronised with the audio.
In the Shallows (Anechoic Chamber)At the River’s Edge (Listening Room)Outflow (Reverb Room)Outflow (Reverb Room)
Photographs by William Rowe & Hayley Suviste
Reviews
❋ Read Fiona Brehony’s reflections on the work, here.
❋ Read Lizzie King’s response, here.