What happens when we listen to a digital archive rather than just look at it?
In a recent series of workshops called Sounding the Archives, I collaborated with media artists to explore how sound – through deep listening, experimental recording and collective participation – can transform our understanding of digital objects. These sessions challenged traditional museum experiences by inviting participants to co-create a polyvocal interpretation of artworks in the online collection of A David Bomberg Legacy – The Sarah Rose Collection.
In collaboration with artists Bill Daggs and Artemis Gryllaki, the workshops brought together students, researchers, and interested members of the public from different disciplines to experiment with sonic responses to an online collection. The process revealed how sound can create new layers of meaning and encourage embodied and multi-sensory engagements with digital collections.
Reimagining the digital archive through sound
Traditional museum audio guides tend to offer a singular narrative, guiding the listener through a space connecting the objects to a larger story. In contrast, the Sounding the Archives workshops sought to create a more open-ended, collective audio experience: one that emphasised multiplicity, subjectivity and playfulness. To get participants to consider: if this digital object made a sound, what would it sound like?
Responses ranged from poetic evocations to abstract sound compositions, layering voices, field recordings and found sounds. One participant recorded the crunch of tortilla chips and celery to accompany a GIF of a dancer, mirroring the jerky movement in the GIF through sonic texture. Another mixed dial-up internet sounds with whispered descriptions to convey the sensation of navigating a digital space. These interactions transformed the artworks into evolving, relational entities rather than static objects.
Workshop 1: Sampling the archive with Bill Daggs
The first workshop, led by artist and musician Bill Daggs, encouraged participants to think about digital objects as sites of collaboration across time. Drawing from his own practice of sampling and remixing, Bill described digital archives as 'collaborating across centuries'. This perspective resonated with the group, reinforcing the idea that engaging with a collection is not just about passive viewing but about active, creative intervention.
Participants created and uploaded short sound pieces inspired by the BRCA artworks, using whatever materials were at hand. The constraints of the task led to highly inventive responses – some using voice, others household objects, and some incorporating software-generated tones. The final exercise involved selecting an artwork and collaboratively mixing a soundscape in real time, culminating in a collective digital 'chorus' that brought together individual contributions into a shared sonic piece. You can listen to the piece below.
Workshop 2: The digital as a shared space with Artemis Gryllaki
The second workshop, co-led with media artist Artemis Gryllaki, built on these ideas but with a more structured approach. Participants moved through a series of exercises designed to highlight the relational nature of sound and digital images. One participant described a visit to caves in Slovakia where an audio guide malfunctioned, overlaying mismatched descriptions onto his experience of the space. This accidental juxtaposition of sound and image created an alternative history – an experience we sought to replicate through experimental prompts and sonic layering.
Technical fluency varied across participants, and those more comfortable with audio editing created multiple layered responses, while others sketched their impressions of what they heard. The workshop concluded with another collective exercise: all participants turned off their cameras and simultaneously made or played sounds in response to an image. The experience of hearing voices and noises in the darkened digital space created a ritualistic quality, underscoring the communal aspect in moments when synchronicity of the sounds being created in different spaces came together. The audio piece can be listened to below.
The power of polyvocality
While the workshops successfully fostered creative engagement, they also revealed some challenges in the digital space. Technical barriers – such as file format restrictions and platform navigation – sometimes disrupted the flow of participation. The structured format of the second workshop, while efficient, left less room for organic conversation and reflection compared to the more open-ended first session.
These audio-based sessions demonstrated the power of polyvocality in digital curation. By incorporating sound and fostering co-creation, the workshops shifted the focus from static interpretations of digital objects to dynamic interactions between users and artworks. They also challenged traditional notions of curatorial authority, positioning participants not just as listeners but as active interpreters shaping the digital archive in real time as the audio files that users created got added to the archive.
Dorothy Mead (1928–1975) 
The Sounding the Archives workshops highlight how digital curation can create a space for interaction, experimentation and collective meaning-making. How would you sound a digital archive? What would you hear?
Find out more and join future audio-based workshops at boroughroadcollectionarchive.com
Theresa Kneppers, curator of A David Bomberg Legacy – The Sarah Rose Collection at London South Bank University
