Ouroboros
A place to be and to do

Ouroboros is a sound installation that manifests in a number of iterations.

The original impetus for it arose during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 whne I conceived the idea of domestic sound installations. I'd been playing around with constructing sound installations in my living room, in the absence of any possibility of copresent work. I was also in contact with flautist Carla Rees and experimenting with exchanging sound files and building a work though responding to these; I sent her drone recordings made on my cello and sh responded with recordings made on her contrabass flute. These recordings formed the basis for the initial iteration of Ouroboros: a routine built in Max which would randomly select, play and loop samples from a folder.

Max being a specialist piece of software that most people don't have, I wanted to produce a version that was readily playable in a typical home. I therefore created a fixed media version: 23 tracks available either as a CD or download which can be played on shuffle for as long as the listener wishes to have the installation running in their home. These tracks don't quite have the unending potential of the Max version, but there are 25,852,016,738,884,976,640,000 possible permutation of them; to listen to them all would take approximately 3.79 trillion years. Not quite infinite but pretty close.

When lockdowns ended and in-person events became possible again I presented Ouroboros as an installation and performance at Safehouse 1, Peckham for the final presentation for my PhD. Safehouse being a derelicy Victorian terrace house this fitted in with the domestic theme that underlines the project. It ran in the afternoon as an 8-channel sound installation, with images and lights on the walls nd Carla's contrabass flute present as an object, and then in the evening evolved into a performance with dancers, musicians, and finally the audience all joining in: a dissolving of the roles of artist/performer/audience into a community.

Ouroboros continues to evolve and has since been presented in various iterations encompassing sound, moveemtn adn video at Trinity Laban in 2024/2025 and most recently at Music and/as Process at Goldsmiths in 2025.

If you are interested in hosting an iteration of Ouroboros, get in touch via the contact form.

You can read more about the creative process of Ouroboros in my PhD thesis.