Leah Barclay
Leah Barclay is a composer and sound artist whose work reflects her belief that “[e]lectro-acoustic music, with the use of natural sounds exposing the state of the world, could be an unprecedented tool in artists taking action in ecological crisis.” Her works are underpinned by her ‘Sonic Ecologies Framework’, a methodology which involves the realisation of collaborative, site-specific sound arts projects incorporating community engagement and education. Examples of such projects include Sonic Explorers, an educational outreach program which engages young people in ecological sound art; The Dam(n) Project, which uses sound art as an activist tool to respond to the destructive damming projects which threaten local water supplies in India’s Narmada valley; and Biosphere Soundscapes, in which Barclay works with artists and communities to use sound to measure the ecological health of UNESCO biosphere reserves. She has been delivering ecological sound works via smartphone apps which respond to the listener’s location; this technology was used to realise Rainforest Listening (2015) at the COP21 climate conference in Paris, with rainforest sounds being ‘planted’ around the city with a particular focus on the Eiffel Tower, at which each level immersed visitors in the soundscape of the corresponding layer of rainforest vegetation. leahbarclay.com