Listening to Inner Sound (working title) is an artistic research project exploring how inner voices, thoughts and fragmented auditory experiences can be externalised through spatial sound environments. Through different methods of listening, recording and sonic transformation, the project investigates how subjective sonic experiences can become perceptible, materialised and open to further exploration through sound.
Working across sound art, spatial audio and affective interaction research, the project draws on voice and personal sound archives, including recordings, sonic memories and fragments collected by the artist and research participants. These materials are explored through granular processing and interactive installations to investigate relations between inner experience, listening and perception. Sound effects function as an intermediary layer in the externalisation process, creating a degree of distance through which inner experiences can be approached, reshaped and listened to differently.
The project is developed by composer and sound artist Ulrik Vincent Østergaard Bertelsen at AIR Lab in collaboration with Jonas Fritsch, Doga Cavdir and Halfdan Hauch Jensen, with its work across artistic and psychiatric contexts developed in close collaboration with Birgit Ærenlund Bundesen, consultant psychiatrist and founder of the Center for Art and Mental Health.
Sound piece
The sound piece on this site was developed through collaboration with an anonymous participant in the research and combines material from the artist’s own sound archive with material from the participant’s personal archive. Through working with voices, memory, inner sound and spatial composition, the materials are reshaped into a sonic narrative exploring externalisation and the movement from affect to effect.
Tones form an additional, wordless layer within the piece, functioning as an inner score beyond language. Here, they become a way of shifting perception and opening another way of approaching change, transformation and the possibility of a new beginning.
The participant remains anonymous, and all contributed material is included with explicit informed consent and permission for public presentation.
Ulrik Vincent Østergaard Bertelsen
CREDITS: Ulrik Vincent Østergaard Bertelsen, Jonas Fritsch, Doga Cavdir, Halfdan Hauch Jensen, Birgit Ærenlund Bundesen.
PROJECT DATE: 2026 (still ongoing)