Professor Gascia Ouzounian
Gascia Ouzounian is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Music at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research examines how sound and vibration shape cities, mediate violence, and organise relations of power.
Her first book, Stereophonica (MIT Press), traces the historical formation of spatial sound and listening from the nineteenth century to the present. Moving from early stereo technologies and experiments in binaural listening to First World War aircraft detection devices, Second World War psychoacoustics research, postwar spatial sound practices, and sound mapping, the book connects technological, artistic, and scientific histories to show how listening became a central mode of knowing, organising, and governing space.
Her forthcoming book, The Trembling City (MIT Press), advances this inquiry into the contemporary urban condition, offering a radical reinterpretation of cities as vibrational territories shaped by conflict, occupation, and mass violence. Drawing on fields including forensic architecture, critical urbanism, and sound studies—and furthering the concepts of vibrational warfare and atmospheric occupation––the book examines how sonic and vibrational forces operate as instruments of power within contemporary urban life.
Alongside these monographs, Ouzounian leads a broader research programme in sonic urbanism. She is Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant project Sonorous Cities: Toward a Sonic Urbanism (SONCITIES), which brings together architects, urbanists, artists, and scholars to experiment with sonic approaches to urban analysis and design. This work includes the forthcoming volume Sonic Urbanism: A Critical Guide (Bloomsbury Academic), which explores how sound and listening can reshape how we understand and design urban space, positioning them as critical tools for urban inquiry and spatial justice.
Collaborative projects underpinning or emerging from this work include: Recomposing the City, co-founded with architect Sarah Lappin in 2012; Scoring the City, developed with urbanist John Bingham Hall; the design-oriented workshops Designing Sonic Refuge (with Nathalie Harb) and Designing Vibrational Architecture (with Jan St. Werner); and experimental research programmes on urban sonic materialities, ecologies, and energies, developed with partners at DAAD Gallery in Berlin and Central Saint Martins (MA Cities) in London.
Ouzounian’s work also extends into exhibitions and experimental collaborations with artists, architects, and designers, exploring how sonic methods can inform urban and spatial research and design.
Across her work, Ouzounian argues that sound and vibration are not peripheral to urban and public life but fundamental to how cities are built, inhabited, governed, and contested. By theorising cities as vibrational territories and developing ‘counterlistening’ as a critical method, her research offers new conceptual tools for understanding the entanglement of sound, environment, violence, and everyday life.
At Oxford she teaches and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate research on sound studies, sonic urbanism, sonic violence, and experimental sound practices.
Ongoing Research Projects
• SONCITIES (ERC project on sonic urbanism)
• Scoring the City (workshop and exhibition series)
Books
2021. Ouzounian, G. Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Edited Journal Issues
2017. Ouzounian, G. Guest editor, Evental Aeshtetics. Vol. 6, No. 1. Special Issue, ‘Sound Art and Environment’.
2016. Ouzounian, G. and Lappin, S. Guest editors, Journal of Sonic Studies. Vol. 11. Special Issue, ‘Recomposing the City’.
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Chapters in Edited Volumes
Forthcoming 2023. ‘Sound, Architecture, Resistance: Sonic Counterspaces.’ Architectural Review. Keynote Essay, Special Issue on Sound.
2023. Ouzounian, G. ‘Counterlistening’. English Studies in Canada. Special Forum on Interdisciplinary Listening. ESC 45.2-3: 53-59.
2023. Ouzounian, G. ‘“Our voices reached the sky”: Sonic Memories of the Armenian Genocide.’ In J. Smolicki, ed., Soundwalking Through History. Routledge.
2022. Ouzounian, G. ‘Becoming Air: On Sonic Spatial Metaphysics.’ In D. Diederichsen, A. Raffeiner, and J. St. Werner, eds. Sound – Space – Sense. Berlin: Haus der Kulturen Welt. Das neue Alphabet / The New Alphabet series.
2021. Ouzounian, G. ‘The Sonic Undercommons: Sound Art in Radical Black Arts Traditions’ in J. Grant, J. Matthias and D. Prior (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Sound Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2020. Ouzounian, G. and De Visscher, E. ‘Resonant Bodies: A discussion about listening in museums’ in G. Kafka, ed., Sonic Urbanism: The Political Voice. London: Theatrum Mundi, pp. 39-45.
2020. Ouzounian, G. and Bingham-Hall, J. ‘The Acoustic City’. ELECTRA Magazine 9, pp. 201-207.
2018. Ouzounian, G. ‘Notes from the Underground: On Resonant Spaces at Dartmouth College.’ Exhibit Catalogue. Resonant Spaces Exhibit. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, USA.
2018. Lappin, S., Ouzounian, G. and O’Grady, R. The Sound-Considered City: A Guide for Decision-Makers. Illustrated guide and Advice Note for city planners. Illustrations by Ryan O’Reilly. 45 pages. Belfast: Recomposing the City.
2017. Ouzounian, G. ‘Rethinking Acoustic Ecology’. Editorial. Evental Aesthetics 6 (1): 4-23.
2017. Ouzounian, G., Haworth C. and Bennett, P. ‘Speculative Designs: Towards a Social Music’. Proceedings of the 43rdInternational Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2017). 15-20 October 2017. Shanghai, China.
2017. Ouzounian, G. ‘“The world of matter has become a Great Nerve’: Feedback in Experimental Music and Sound Art.’ Exhibit Catalogue. singuhr hoergalerie, Berlin, Germany.
2017. Ouzounian, G. ‘Timescapes: Reflections on The Present Instant’. Exhibit Catalogue. The Present Instant. Platform Arts, Belfast.
2016. Ouzounian, G, Knapp R. B., Lyon E., DuBois, R. L. ‘To be inside someone else's dream: On Music for Sleeping & Waking Minds’ in Alexander R. Jensenius and Michael Lyons (eds.), A NIME Reader. New York: Springer, pp. 405-417.
2016. Ouzounian, G. and Lappin, S. ‘New Directions in Urban Sound Art’. Editorial. Journal of Sonic Studies 11. Special Issue, ‘Recomposing the City’. Online.
2014. Ouzounian, G. and Lappin, S. ‘Soundspace: A Manifesto’. Journal of Architecture and Culture 2(1): 305-316.
2014. Lyon, E., Knapp, R. B., and Ouzounian, G. ‘Compositional and Performance Mapping in Computer Chamber Music: A Case Study’. Computer Music Journal 38(3): 64-75.
2014. Ouzounian, G. ‘Sound Art’ in Michael Kelly, ed. Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 2nd Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 27-31.
2014. Ouzounian, G. ‘Acoustic Mapping’ in The Acoustic City (eds. Matthew Gandy and Benny Nilsen). Berlin: Jovis: 165-174.
2014. Ouzounian G. ‘Poème électronique’. Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism.
2014. Ouzounian, G and Papalexandri-Alexandri, M. ‘Correspondences’. Current Musicology 95: 33-54.
2013. Ouzounian, G. ‘Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in Belfast’. Leonardo Music Journal. LMJ 23: 47-54.
2013. Ouzounian, G. ‘Sound Installation Art: From Spatial Poetics to Politics, Aesthetics to Ethics’ in Georgina Born (ed.), Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 73-89.
2011. Ouzounian, G. ‘The Uncertainty of Experience: On George Brecht's Event Scores’. Journal of Visual Culture 10(2): 198-211.
2011. Ouzounian, G. ‘The Luminous Ear: An Introduction to the Sounding Visions of Paul DeMarinis’ (English with German translation) in I. Beirer, S. Himmelsbach, and C. Seiffarth (eds.), Paul DeMarinis: Buried in Noise. Heidelberg and Berlin: Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg: 9-21.
2009. Ouzounian, G. ‘Impure Thinking Practices and Clinical Acts: The Sonorous Becomings of Heidi Fast’. Organised Sound 14(1): 75-81.
2008. Ouzounian, G. ‘History, an Exit Strategy: The RetroFuture Fabulations of kara lynch’. Journal of the Society for American Music 2(2): 177-201.
2008. Ouzounian, G. ‘Contemporary Radio Art and Spatial Politics: The Critical Radio Utopias of Anna Friz’. RADIO Journal 5(2&3): 129-142.
2007. Ouzounian, G. ‘Visualizing Acoustic Space: The Story of Poème électronique’. Revue Circuit 17(3): 45-56.
2006. Ouzounian, G. ‘Embodied Sound: Aural Architectures and the Body’. Contemporary Music Review 25(1-2): 69-79.
Interviews
Forthcoming 2023. Ouzounian, G. ‘Urgent Listening: A Conversation with Hardi Kurda.’ Openwork Journal.
2022. Ouzounian, G. ‘Aftersound: A Conversation with Mhamad Safa.’ London: The Showroom.
2022. Ouzounian, G. and Meireles, M. ‘Lockdown Sonics: A Conversation’. In G. Kafka, ed. Crafting a Sonic Urbanism: Listening to Non-Human Life. London: Theatrum Mundi.
2020. Ouzounian, G. ‘Hearing Power: A Conversation with Haig Aivazian.’ Flash Art, Listening In column, ed. B. Piekut.
2016. Lappin, S. and Ouzounian, G. ‘Sonic Places: In Conversation with Peter Cusack’. Journal of Sonic Studies 11. Special Issue, ‘Recomposing the City’. Online.
2010. Ouzounian, G. ‘An Interview with Paul DeMarinis’. Computer Music Journal 34(4): 10-21.
Reviews
2009. Ouzounian, G. ‘Bay Area Women in Creative Music’. [Review]. Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture (13): 106-108.
Research interests include: sonic urbanism; sound and violence; earwitness testimony and sonic investigation; spatial sound and sonic technologies; experimental music and sound art.
