Sound Scene 2025: Connected: Program Highlights

a woman plays a violin in a dark blue lit room

May 22, 2025

Sound Scene 2025: Connected: Program Highlights
Premier Mid-Atlantic Audio Arts Festival Will Be Presented at the Hirshhorn Museum in Partnership with DC Listening Lounge, May 30-June 1

Now in its 18th year, Sound Scene, the Mid-Atlantic’s premier, interactive audio arts festival, will be presented at the Hirshhorn Museum in partnership with The DC Listening Lounge on Saturday, May 31, 10 am-5 pm and Sunday, June 1, 10 am-5 pm.

Sound Scene 2025: Connected considers how symbiosis, partnerships, and the ways differences can be complementary, leading to a vibrant world. The all-ages showcase presents six multisensory audio art installations, six interactive workshops, and nine performances by regional and global artists throughout the Museum. Admission is free; advance online registration is required for any of the six sessions for Double Yolk Collective’s workshop, A Thousand Mornings.

Sound Scene 2025: Connected programming highlights include:

  • Audio arts installations:
    Control (The Magician) by Emily Francisco, an artist, professor and audiovisual administrator based on Washington, DC, demands engagement with a 61-key Mason and Hamlin reed organ. The instrument has been modified to transmits broadcast television, CCTV surveillance feeds and audio signals to monitors and speakers when played by hand. Francisco is a 2025 Sondheim Prize semifinalist. The presentation is made possible by support from the DCCAH Arts and Humanities Fellowship
  • Housework Commons, a three-part installation by artists Jocelyn Ho, Margaret Schedel and Sofy Yuditskaya, transforms familiar domestic tools (an iron, drying rack, embroidery hoop) into musical instruments.  Visitor participation in communal housework transforms their actions into sound art. Using machine learning and sensors, the instruments change pitch according to its position and timbre depending on a fabric’s color and texture. “Embedded Iron” won the 2021 International Alliance for Women in Music Ruth Andersen Award for Installation.
  • Touch by Estonian installation artist Katrin Enni explores the connection between gesture, sound and invisible materiality. Participants are invited to shape an electronic soundscape as unique as a fingerprint, their hand movements tracked by camera-based sensors and translated into sound. The presentation is supported by the National Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Interactive workshops:

  • A Thousand Mornings by Double Yolk Collective (Beccy Abraham, Laura Coe, Alan Kuang, Albert Zhang) is a playful exercise in sound choreography. Participants will tap into their own electricity, turning the Museum’s floor into a music-making instrument amplifying the sound of their immediate connectivity to life. Double Yolk, a collective of sonic practice students from Dartmouth University, premiered A Thousand Mornings at Jacob’s Pillow 2024, and presented the work at NIME 2024 in Utrecht, Netherlands, where they were awarded Best Art/ Music Installation.

Workshops will be held Sat., May 31: 10:30-11:15 am; 1:30-2:15 pm; 4-4:45 pm, and Sun., June 1: 10:30-11:15 am; 1:30-2:15 pm; 4-4:45 pm. Advance registration via the Hirshhorn website is required for each of the six free 45-minute sessions. While Double Yolk’s workshops are appropriate for an all-ages audience, we regret these are inaccessible to visitors with pacemakers.  Children ages 12 and under must be accompanied by an adult.

Performances:

  • Kimyan Law, Congolese-Austrian multidisciplinary artist, incorporates African instruments, patterns and influences into his complex electronic soundscapes. Mixing samples, drumming and live instrumentality, Kimyan Law Live bridges ancient imagery and contemporary aesthetics. The performance is made possible by support from the Austrian Cultural Forum.
  • Kokayi, a Guggenheim Fellow for Music Composition and GRAMMY Award-nominee, will perform his audio score inspired by Thomas Mann’s 1930 address, An Appeal to Reason. Blending archival recordings, classical motifs and contemporary sound design, the composition serves as a meditation on reason and a reflection of hip-hop’s ethos: to create meaning from limited means.
    The appearance by the DC-based multidisciplinary artist is sponsored by the Goethe Institut. This project was developed in collaboration with The Library of Congress.

Additional installations and performances feature participating artists include:

Audio Flux Circuit 5: In 3D: John DeLore and Julie Shapiro with Eric Drysdale
Below the Surface: Farida Highes, Matt Keown
Echo Nexus: David Cardona, Alvaro Morales, Anna Schwartz
I Resist This: Leo Grierson, Peter Pattengill, Charlotte Richardson-Deppe
The Power of Sound! Harmony & Dissonance Surrounds Us: Iliana Garabyare, Manuel De La Luz, Estephanie Rose
Tag Team: Roman Martinez, Synthador
We Are a Pattern: Duncan Figurski

Hirshhorn Museum exhibitions will be open 10am-5:30pm throughout Sound Scene 2025. On Sat., May 31, museum educators will host a free hands-on artmaking sessions between 10 am–1 pm inside Hirshhorn Art School. Registration is not required. Drop-ins welcome.

About The DC Listening Lounge + Sound Scene

Sound Scene began in 2008 and is organized by the DC Listening Lounge audio arts collective in

collaboration with the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Sound Scene is an annual, free, two-day event, open to the public. In 2024, Sound Scene broke attendance records for the Hirshhorn museum attracting more than 19,000 attendees over 2 days. Sound Scene celebrates sound through multi-sensory art installations including sculptural, headphone-based and multi-channel interactive exhibits. Our live stage features performances of dance, music, and spoken word. Sound Scene’s small group workshops invite audiences to explore acoustics, beat-making, sound production, sonic meditation, group improvisation, and more. Sound Scene features the creative work of artists from across the world. Find the complete list of featured works and performance schedule on Soundscene.org. Follow the festival on Instagram.

About the Hirshhorn
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is the national museum of modern and contemporary art and a leading voice for 21st-century art and culture. Part of the Smithsonian, the Hirshhorn is located prominently on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Its holdings encompass one of the most important collections of postwar American and European art in the world. The Hirshhorn presents diverse exhibitions and offers an array of public programs on the art of our time—free to all. The Hirshhorn Museum is open Mondays noon–5:30 pm and Tuesdays–Sundays 10 am–5:30 pm (except Dec. 25). For more information, visit hirshhorn.si.edu. Follow the Museum on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Image credits: Sound Scene 2024. Photo: Anthony Washington; Sound Scene 2025: Connected; Design by Ash Farrand