An interdisciplinary sound artist, former assistant to Deep Listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros, and educator based in New York City, C. Lavender explores the meditative, hypnotic, and psychoacoustic dimensions of sound through performance, installation, and guided listening. During her residency (27 June – 3 July 2025), she will develop a new work titled Dissipation Traces, commissioned as part of the Listening Room programme for the Sonic Acts Biennial 2026.

Developed between the new Sonic Acts Spatial Sound Studio in Rotterdam and the Willem Twee Studios in Den Bosch, Dissipation Traces draws from a foundational concept by experimental music and neurofeedback pioneer David Rosenboom: ‘Equilibrium is genesis, substance is asymmetry. Dissipation is a creative process, a generator of complexity.’* Lavender’s new composition continues her deep engagement with the therapeutic and perceptual potentials of sound, exploring ‘embodied resonance’ – a collective experience in which movement, emotion, and awareness converge through sonic alignment. Her process combines brainwave entrainment and spatial audio to examine how shifts in mental state can be felt and understood communally.

Created with rare analogue synthesisers and mid-20th-century scientific test equipment – including an ARP 2500 from the Willem Twee collection – the work reflects on the material vulnerability of ageing machines, drawing a parallel with the physiological processes of human decline. This sensitivity to decay and resonance extends ideas previously explored in her 2020 release Myth of Equilibrium (Editions Mego), which used a geodesic dome structure to contain spatial sound and reflect on ‘failed utopias’ as described by Buckminster Fuller. While working on Dissipation Traces, C. Lavender will utilise the spatial audio realm as a container for addressing how embodied resonance is harder to achieve as isolation and the ever-growing decline and diminishment of societal support structures propel a lack of universal empathy.

About the Spatial Sound Residency

The Spatial Sound Residency is a new initiative by Sonic Acts that supports artists in developing multichannel sound works through dedicated time, technical resources, and curatorial dialogue. Based at the Spatial Sound Studio in Rotterdam, the residency offers a flexible framework for experimentation, inviting artists to rethink spatial audio beyond fixed formats and conventional staging. Residents have access to high-spec tools, including both 8.1 and Dolby Atmos systems, facilitating a focus on process, research, and critical listening. Developed as part of a trajectory leading up to the 2026 Biennial, the residency continues Sonic Acts’ long-standing commitment to spatial sound as a site of artistic inquiry and audience engagement.