The Barbican’s brutalist maze becomes the stage for a powerful exploration of sound.
In the iconic London arts centre, Anna Mitchell discovers how technology, space and creativity combine to transform the act of listening.
You don’t so much walk into Feel the Sound as tune into it. Entering through the Barbican’s Silk Street entrance visitors are greeted by Observatory Station, a sound installation by Miyu Hosoi. Twelve d&b 44S loudspeakers integrated into a series of columns deliver whispered fragments of global soundscapes - city traffic, birdsong, wind - curated by an algorithm pulling from a growing archive of field recordings. One of those sources? A mic installed in the Barbican itself, recording random snippets every day.
Observatory Station (2025), Miyu Hosoi | Feel the Sound at the Barbican | © Thomas Adank / Barbican Centre
Sound as structure
This was just the prelude. Beyond lay an immersive and interactive experience that challenges you to listen not just with your ears, but your body too, as sound is explored as a frequency. From its inception, audio wasn’t an accessory to this exhibition, it was its heart. Central to that experience is a collaboration between the Barbican, the lead sound designer Tom Slater, and audio partner d&b audiotechnik. Their combined effort transforms the venue’s Curve gallery space, and parts of the underground car park, into a continuous, spatially aware sound experience.
Tech that listens back
Slater relied on d&b’s Soundscape, powered by the DS100 signal engine and remote-controlled via the R1 software platform to coherently tie a series of exhibits together. “Soundscape became the glue that held it all together,” he tells me. “We had ten very different commissions, each with their own material, tone, and intent. Soundscape allowed me to design a continuous spatial journey without compromising the identity of each piece.”
That journey begins inside the exhibition proper, which curves gently through the Barbican’s concrete spine. Slater designed decompression spaces, what he and the curatorial team refer to as “cleansing zones”, to separate the installations. Each of these zones is outfitted with concealed d&b 44S speakers, tucked behind perforated walls and inset into the ceiling. Rather than mere buffers, they’re mood resets: ambient pieces to guide, soothe, and prepare you for what comes next.
R1 was key to programming these transitions. With most of the exhibition’s system networked through d&b amplifiers, Slater could balance EQ and levels across the entire space from a single interface. “I treated the show not as isolated works,” he explains, “but as one evolving spatial composition. The ability to fine-tune the entire experience holistically was invaluable.”
Designing with emotion
As my journey into the exhibition started, I encountered Resonant Frequencies by Evan Ifekoya in a dimly lit room that makes no effort to hide the d&b 8S speakers installed, they’re a central part of the show. A platform in this space lets you feel vibrations physically. This installation, inspired by ancestral listening practices, visualises how sound resonates through water and the human body. Frequencies with supposed healing properties fill the space; lie down, and you begin to feel sound as much as hear it.
Resonant Frequencies (2022), Evan Ifekoya | Feel the Sound at the Barbican | © Thomas Adank / Barbican Centre
That theme continues throughout. At Elsewhere in India [pictured top], a South Asian-inspired AV experience, I watched projected dancers guide me through a sequence of movements while a reactive soundscape mirrored my gestures. Later, Un/Bound, an immersive choral work by Trans Voices and Monom, pulled me into a modular 3D speaker grid, built by the Berlin-based spatial sound studio. Voices surrounded me in every dimension, and you can even add your own to the mix.
UN / BOUND (2025), TRANS VOICES, ILA, MONOM, with contribution from Patty Ayukawa. Supported by Neutone, MOTH & 4DSOUND | Feel the Sound at the Barbican | © Thomas Adank / Barbican Centre
Slater’s integration of Soundscape didn’t stop at transitions. He collaborated directly on several installations, including Resonant Frequencies, where he worked with ambisonic decoders and even helped develop a custom speaker array using hollowed-out calabashes, delivering a fusion of tradition and tech. “This created a beautiful interplay between natural acoustic materials and contemporary spatial rendering,” he says.
From the Curve to the car park
The building itself posed some challenges. The Curve gallery is adjacent to the Barbican’s concert hall, home of the London Symphony Orchestra. “This space is essentially a buffer,” Slater told me. “We had to work closely with the orchestra to make sure none of our installations disrupted recordings or performances.” On top of that, the show needed to be tourable; after London, it’s heading to Tokyo’s MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives. That meant designing a system flexible enough to adapt to completely different acoustics and infrastructures.
d&b’s involvement went far beyond equipment supply. Slater spent time at the company’s UK facility in Nailsworth, using their demo spaces to prototype mixes and trial speaker configurations. “Getting to experiment with the 44S there was a game-changer,” he said. “The rotatable horn design gave me flexibility I needed, especially in tight or irregular zones.” d&b's R1 software also enabled precise scheduling and seamless control over the exhibition timeline, a necessity when the final pieces, like Max Cooper’s Reflections of Being, were added just four weeks before opening.
Reflections of Being (2025), Max Cooper | Feel the Sound at the Barbican | © Thomas Adank / Barbican Centre
Luke Kemp, head of Creative Programme, Immersive at the Barbican, emphasised that this level of integration was by design. “We started with listening,” he said. “Our workshops shaped the show around emotional response and accessibility. We wanted sound to reach beyond just hearing to hit the whole body. We also wanted to reach new audiences including a younger demographic.” Kemp also hinted that the Barbican and d&b’s partnership is only beginning: “We see this as a model for future collaboration.”
And the future feels exciting. Feel the Sound extends all the way to the Barbican’s car park, where Joyride, a nostalgic nod to boy racer culture, transforms salvaged vehicles into booming club spaces. Each car showcases a different sound system, turning the underground concrete bunker into an unexpectedly joyful finale. Emerging onto the sunny terrace afterward, I genuinely felt like I’d left a nightclub at dawn. Apparently, that emotional arc was entirely intentional.
Joyride (2025), Temporary Pleasure | Feel the Sound at the Barbican
A new blueprint for audio storytelling
It’s rare to find an exhibition where the audio design isn’t just accompaniment but architecture. In Feel the Sound, the tech is visible and the result unforgettable. For d&b audiotechnik, it’s a showcase of what audio can achieve when treated as a creative partner rather than a support act. For the Barbican, it’s a blueprint for a new kind of immersive storytelling.
For visitors, it’s something else entirely: an invitation to listen, to feel and ultimately to rethink what sound really is.
Feel the Sound runs at the Barbican Centre in London until August 31, 2025.
Top image: Resonance Continuum (2025), Elesewhere in India | Feel the Sound at the Barbican | © Thomas Adank / Barbican Centre