Collaborative Unit
Brief
Design and stage a sonic intervention that amplifies, distorts, or reclaims public space in Walworth.
Group members
Aishwarya SajI, Andre Dinis, Lindy Qin, Merrin O'Connor, Mingzhi Zhang, and Oindrilla Sinha
Introduction
This two-week brief has asked us to engage with sound in the area where we go to class every day. Walworth is a place full of culture and history, a history that is often overlooked, especially when it comes to Saint Peter’s Walworth. A church designed by the renowned architect Sir John Soane (Brayley, 1829). Through this project, we aimed to create a Sonic Timeline to reflect on the history of Walworth and the church, while also looking ahead to what the church will do for the community in the future. This blog entry will not just be about the outcome but will walk through the process of decision-making and limitation that came with this project.
Sounds as a Research Method for Understanding a Place
While the church is a historic building, we wanted to honor the structure and its purpose as a vessel that has witnessed the streets of Walworth change.
Exterior of Saint Peter’s Church in Walworth, London (O’Connor, 2026)
Abstract sketch of St. Peter's Soundscape during our soundscape walk in Walworth, led by Ronnie Deelen (multidisciplinary artist focusing on sound). During this stop on our tour, I already knew about some of the history as I had already been to St. Peter's with Rosie Oliver (Audio producer and London guide) (O’Connor, 2026).
Oindrilla Sinha is testing the Zoom H4n Pro (portable audio recorder) and microphone. This device helped us hear and record things that we would not have been able to detect with the human ear (O’Connor, 2026).
Listening to the soundscape of St. Peter's accentuates and merges the relationships, people, and history of the space. Listing is an embodied research method in itself. Along with artifact analysis, it helped us uncover the sounds, rhythms, and even visuals of a space. As explained in The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, initial licensing can provide insights into how users experince and understand an environment (Schafer, 1994).
Aishwarya SajI and Oindrilla Sinha are recording and observing the sounds inside and outside of Saint Peter’s Walworth. Many of the sounds we recorded during this initial were used in the final product (O’connor, 2026).
Contrasting with traditional research methods, simply listening gave us a unique opportunity to use real-world sounds from a specific site, but unfortunately, this abstract method comes with its limitations. I had a conversation about the subjectivity of sound with Mother Doris (a curator at St. Peter's), and it helped me understand how subjective sound really is. She said she loves hearing children play in the back of the church during mass, but some people do not like the disruptions. The sound is the same, but these two groups perceive it differently. This helps me frame our work not as a historically accurate reenactment of sound but as a sonic interpretation.
Why Saint Peter's Walworth?
While exploring St. Peter's, we learned that this place, while a sacred space, is also a historic landmark, a community hub, and an event space. Saint Louie Cafe is located in the old St. Peter's Crypt. A space that was used for death is now used for modern-day gathering and socialization. We even had our interview with Father Andrew in the Cafe.
The Crypt as it is today, St Louis Cafe. A space where many people from inside and outside the community come to work and be together. We took advantage of this space and worked there most days. (Dinis, 2026)
Using sound felt suitable for the building's history, as it has “heard” first hand a war, social change, street riots, gentrification, and had two bombs dropped directly on the structure. The change this church has “heard” and endured through its timeline would make a strong sonic intervention while also educating people about its history.
Image of Saint Peter’s Walworth post World War II Bombing being reconstructed (St. Peter’s Church, Walworth Conservation Management Plan)
Research Constrants
During our research process, we were immediately faced with a constraint: time. While we had two weeks to complete this sonic intervention, we wanted to respect the time that Father Andrew (Rector) and Nina Swann (Heritage Manager) were willing to give us. Unfortunately, our interview was scheduled two days before our final presentation. This led us to think about what information and data we can collect before this interview. We began diving into the history of the church, which was limited to secondary sources.
Physical timeline made through secondary research and interviews. The yellow tabs indicate which sounds we wanted to create for each time period (O’Connor, 2026)
Luckily, St. Peter's is a Grade I building, and its history is well documented, but there was the risk that we would misrepresent the past. We knew that this was not the only way to get information, so we went to the Sunday service to speak with some members. These interviews were very casual, and not many people had complete information about the history. However, this is where we were able to gain information about how people felt about the different sounds of the church and its importance to the surrounding area. Although these constraints made things difficult, they inspired us to be more independent and think about this design process in a more creative way.
Conducting Speed Dating Research. Our participants were asked to listen to 3 Ideas on where the sonic timeline should be placed and give feedback quickly after hearing a short description (O’Connor, 2026).
Initial sketches were shown to the participants (SajI, 2026). Feedback from the speed dating session, which was in favor of the idea of us having the sounds within the church itself (O’Connor, 2026)
Constructing the Sonic Timeline
When documenting the sounds, we had to think critically about each sound and how it might be interpreted. As designers, we were in a unique place, as we do not necessarily have to represent each sound to be exactly sonically correct, especially in the historical context. We had a unique opportunity to create these sounds artistically. We record sounds at the church and the Imperial War Museum, but mostly use Foley sounds.
Three of the many Foley sounds we created for our timeline. Foley sound creation is the art of recreating everyday sounds(Ament, 2014). This was inspired by many cartoon sound artists who use this technique (Dinis and Zhang, 2026).
Spatial Sounds and Experince Design
Our design to place the sounds throughout the church was inspired by a regular timeline. Just as one would normally move through a timeline, we wanted someone to walk through and hear the different sound effects we created along a historical timeline.
Recording our sonic timline whith in the church required us to use many different devices and speakers. AS we played all the sounds while one person recorded. While this technique was not simple, we believe recoding the sounds in the church helps drive our concept further (Dinis, 2026).
After recording the timeline, we shot the video so that the sounds would be over. We wanted the video to represent how we hope this would be set up if it were a long-term project. The person would move through the church and listen to the curated timeline (SajI, 2026).
There were many spatial and technical challenges, including where to place each sound, making sure each sound played as the person would be walking by, considering whether sounds would be too overpowering, and recording in an uncontrolled environment where people were cleaning and sounds from outside the church would interfere. Working with St. Peter's gave our project a sense of place. The sounds the user would be hearing could help them understand the floor under their feet and the roof over their heads.
Final Sonic Timeline (Videography by Dinis, 2026)
Even though our sounds did not come off clearly, recording them in the church gave them an authentic sound and gave our project a place to live in the world
Our final challenge was about giving our classmates a similar experience in the classroom. We are testing multiple different application nd found that AmpMe would allow us to play the same audio at the same time. We then place one person in the back of the room, one in the middle, and one in the front, so the sound played in different places in the room to emulate the experience in the church
Conclusion: Feedback, reflections, and Future Direction
Our Sonic timeline was on display during the “Work in Progress” show in the London College of Communication. This allowed us to bring the sounds of Saint Peter’s into our own institution (Dinis, 2026).
Feedback on our final product highlighted the immersive nature of the video and the audio together, along with the arrangement of the different speakers throughout the space, which gives the audience a sense of time and place. The ambiguity of many of the sounds was praised because then people could have more of an emotional response to the material rather than purely a historical response. Future versions of the Sonic Timeline could involve more local voices that have experienced some of these historical events to add more historical accuracy while also sharing the emotional stories of the people of Walworth and St. Peter's. We want the voices of Walworth to continue sharing their stories and their history. Turning this into an extended project would require more research into accessibility and different ways of engagement, including photos, graphics, and more videos. This project showcased that sound is not only something that can be heard, but it’s also something to be felt.
References
Edward Wedlake Brayley, 1829. Londiniana; or, Reminiscences of the British Metropolis: Including Characteristic Sketches, Antiquarian, Topographical, Descriptive and Literary. Vol. IV. London: Hurst, Chance & Co. Available at: https://archive.org/details/londinianaorremi04bray/page/304 (Accessed: 14 March 2026).
The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World – R. Murray Schafer
Schafer, R.M. (1994) The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books.
Ament, V.T., 2014. The Foley grail: The art of performing sound for film, games, and animation. Routledge.
