If awarded The Dover Prize, I would use the bursary to further develop Syzygy—an evolving installation and research project that explores ecological ethics, sonic materiality, and speculative co-authorship. This phase would take root in Darlington, offering space to translate the project’s planetary concerns into locally embedded, durational practice.
My work sits at the intersection of feminist improvisation, diaspora, and more-than-human technologies. I often collaborate with communities through listening-based engagements, using sound, wearable sensors, and participatory AI tools to imagine alternative futures. Previous versions of this work have taken shape in South Africa, Lesotho, Indonesia, the USA, and across the UK and Europe. What this opportunity offers is the ability to apply my practice to engage with a new environment, and to situate my ongoing approach to interactive techno-ecological work to respond intimately with a new context, Darlington and its textures, stories, and potentials.
The bursary would support:
• A period of local engagement: listening walks, co-writing sessions, and sonic mapping workshops with residents, young people, and local artists.
• Development of accessible, responsive tools (e.g., BLE-based sound interfaces, Haptic and interactive sculptures, AI co-performance systems) to translate human and more-than-human gestures into shared sonic environments.
• Research and production time to create a new installation specifically for Darlington—attuned to its landscapes, histories, and speculative futures.
I am drawn to Darlington as a town of transit and transformation, a place shaped by early infrastructures of technological revolution and movement (railways, rivers) and now ripe for reimagining. This residency would offer the space to explore how artistic technologies can attend to place while embedding in their histories and relationships with changing roles between humans and the tools and technologies we create in our world. It would also allow me to build on my experience facilitating community-embedded projects by deepening those processes over time, rather than through short-term commissions.
This award would mark an important shift in my practice—from fast, festival-based iterations to rooted, co-developed public artworks. It would also enable the creation of a new chapter of Syzygy—a living creative world made with and for Darlington, offering sonic forms of listening, relation, and speculation.
The final work would premiere in Darlington and remain open to ongoing contribution, evolving into a shared site of ecological imagination and posthuman collaboration.
In contributing to the creative life of Darlington, I offer more than just a finished artwork, I bring a process that is open, collaborative, and designed to leave lasting impact. My work is rooted in co-developed methodologies, shaped by the people, places, and temporalities that inform it. This prize offers the chance not only to create something new, but to embed a mode of working that invites others in and leaves behind artistic tools, shared knowledge, and relationships that continue beyond the project.
I have developed participatory, place-sensitive methods across global contexts and I see Darlington as a new co-author in that journey. Through workshops, public listening events, and experimental toolmaking, I aim to foster curiosity and create shared creative infrastructures that support local artists, youth, and communities.
In doing so, I hope to contribute to a wider culture of creative experimentation in the region, one that values openness, care, and imaginative technologies which are offered in accessible means that expand the notions of who has access to creative technologies and who gets to have a voice in the future of our artistic technological futures. My ambition is not just to show my work in Darlington, but to be part of a creative ecology that grows new ideas together and leaves behind generative frameworks for others to build on.
My practice moves across experimental composition, speculative installation, and participatory research, working at the intersection of feminist improvisation, diasporic identity, and more-than-human collaboration. I create instruments, scores, and environments that invite audiences and communities into co-creative processes, often using technologies like AI, wearable sensors, and responsive sound to rethink how we listen, relate, and imagine together. Recent works include Tentaculae, part of my MycoMusic project, an immersive installation exploring music-making between human and fungal bio-systems. Commissioned by the AiiA Festival (Switzerland) and nominated for a Creative Climate Award (New York), the piece uses fungal biofeedback and sensor-based interaction to challenge anthropocentric ideas of musical authorship. This evolved into Ostoyae, a bespoke mushroom-based instrument commissioned by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, featured in The Wire Magazine, and premiered at UNESCO’s Week of Sound. As this year’s composer-in-residence with the Bahue Duo (USA), I’m developing Fronterra, a series of song cycles reflecting on contemporary Latinx experience. The term evokes both ‘border’ and ‘frontier,’ explored through hybrid tuning systems that interrogate postcolonial structures and generate complex relationships between pitch, body, and cultural identity. Upcoming work includes the UK premiere of Marlaut, commissioned by hcmf// and Perempuan Komponis, and exhibited in Jakarta (2024). The immersive installation features Zemi and The Sapphnetic Mirror, participatory works that explore feminist, diasporic, and postcolonial perspectives through gesture, feedback, and sound. My work often grows from long-term, collaborative relationships rooted in care and listening. I co-founded Chimère Communities, an initiative that brings together artists, researchers, and technologists to foreground marginalised voices, particularly from the Global South, in shaping the narratives and futures of AI. We create participatory tools and speculative frameworks that invite more plural, situated intelligences into the conversation. I also lead workshops worldwide across Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas, working with local communities, young people, and artists to explore sound, movement, and technology as shared spaces of inquiry. These projects are often developed with grassroots organisations, schools, and health services, focusing on accessibility, experimentation, and ethical responsiveness. As an immigrant and daughter of immigrants, my work is rooted in the belief that improvisation and community practice are not just methods, but ways of carrying and replanting the dispersed seeds of diaspora—tools for remembering, adapting, and building futures together.
I completed my Bachelor of Music (BMus) and Master of Music (MMus) degrees at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where I focused on composition, improvisation, and collaborative performance. My studies integrated elements of sound installation, visual scoring, and performance art, often working at the intersection of experimental music and spatial, material practice.
I later completed my PhD at the University of Huddersfield, where my research explored the role of technologies in the development and sustainment of artistic communities on a global scale, working with feminist improvisation, and participatory design in international collaboraitons.
Although my formal degrees are music-based, my work consistently crosses into visual and applied arts through sculpture, installation, and technological craft. My practice has been exhibited internationally in galleries, science-art festivals, and public space contexts, and is regularly situated within visual arts frameworks.
I also lecture and supervise postgraduate students working across visual, sonic, and performative disciplines, and have developed curricula on interdisciplinary making, feminist technology, and speculative worldbuilding.
Most recently, I was awarded a £20,000 grant from Immersive Arts UK (AHRC) for a major collaborative project that supports the development of an immersive installation exploring ecological sensing, sonic storytelling, and embodied interaction and to further my practice in speculative technologies and participatory environments.
Other significant awards include the 2024 MANE Emerging Composer Prize (Australia) for Pleiades, the Creative Climate Awards nomination (New York, 2023) for Tentaculae, and Best Work with Artificial Intelligence at the AiiA Festival (Switzerland, 2021) for Incheon, an AI-integrated opera. I also received the Daphne Oram Award from the BBC Radiophonic Studio for innovation in gender-diverse music technology, and was selected as a Scottish delegate to Jazz Ahead (Germany) in recognition of excellence in improvisation.
My work has been supported by Creative Scotland, Pro Helvetia Johannesburg, US Cultural Councils, and various academic and artistic institutions across Europe and the Global South. These grants have enabled me to deliver ambitious, socially engaged, and technologically innovative works across diverse international contexts.
I am the co-founder of Chimère Communities, a research-creation platform that brings together artists, technologists, and thinkers to reimagine the future of artificial intelligence through collaborative, justice-oriented, and diasporic approaches. Chimère supports public workshops, speculative tool-making, and community-based research, with a focus on amplifying marginalised voices in shaping AI narratives and creative technologies.
In addition, I have co-developed several artist-led research projects, installations, and international collaborations. These include Digital Playgrounds for Music, my current role as postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Huddersfield, a platform for participatory sound technologies; and a number of interdisciplinary toolkits, for use in primary, secondary, higher education and cultural contexts.
I am a curator for Mopomoso (Vortex, London), the UK’s longest-running free improvisation concert series. There, I founded the annual Matriarchal March, a platform dedicated to showcasing and celebrating gender-diverse artists in improvised music. This initiative not only spotlights underrepresented voices, but also creates new visibility, mentorship, and community infrastructures within the UK scene.
For over eight years, I’ve also been a core member and committee lead with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO), where I curate DEI initiatives for the ensemble. This includes international commissioning programs for underrepresented composers, and a major upcoming collaboration with Indonesian artists for our 2025 festival, developing shared practices in improvisation, gamelan, and cross-cultural co-creation.
Alongside these roles, I regularly design and facilitate workshops with artists, young people, and marginalised communities. These engagements form part of my wider methodology: treating improvisation and sound as tools for building shared knowledge, care-based collaboration, and experimental public culture.
For me, organising is both an artistic and political act, about reshaping the conditions for who gets to listen, lead, and imagine.
Yes, I have been commissioned by a range of public institutions in the UK and internationally to develop interdisciplinary and community-focused work.
• Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//) and Perempuan Komponis commissioned Marlaut, an immersive sound installation exploring feminist and diasporic archives, premiered in Jakarta (2024).
• Royal Society of Edinburgh commissioned Ostoyae, a fungal biofeedback instrument, which premiered at UNESCO’s Week of Sound and was featured in The Wire Magazine and the BBC radiophonic podcast.
• Creative Scotland supported a series of community-centred audiovisual works with visual artist Kate Steenhauer, exhibited across rural Scottish venues and community centres.
• Immersive Arts UK (AHRC) commissioned a forthcoming large-scale VR and sound installation, exploring ecological sensing and speculative embodiment.
• Pro Helvetia Johannesburg funded a collaborative residency with an activist artist collective in Lesotho, culminating in a public performance at the Fak’ugesi Festival in Johannesburg.
• Springfield, Holyoke, and Haverhill Cultural Councils (USA) supported my work as composer-in-residence with the Bahue Duo to create Fronterra, a multilingual song cycle on Latinx experience and sonic borderlands.
These commissions reflect a sustained practice of public engagement through speculative technologies, participatory tools, and site-sensitive sound-based installation.
My work has not yet been acquired by a public art collection, but I have sold several pieces through private collectors and continue to exhibit regularly through professional galleries.
I am represented by Analix Forever Gallery (Geneva), where I also serve as a curator. I curated Ça pourrait être mieux, a group exhibition exploring interdisciplinary feminist practices, and 30 ans / 30 jours – Is the New Punk, which featured both my own work and that of commissioned artists from diverse experimental practices. These exhibitions were part of Analix Forever’s 30th anniversary programme, celebrating radical, cross-disciplinary work. Through this gallery, my pieces have been exhibited internationally and sold into private collections.
My visual work has also been exhibited in the UK at Sunny Bank Mills Gallery (Leeds), Cupola Gallery (Sheffield), and as part of a group exhibition and performance at Gallery of Modern Art (Glasgow). Across these contexts, I present sculpture, graphic scores, and participatory media installations informed by diasporic experience, improvisation, and speculative design.
While my work is not yet in a public collection, my ongoing curatorial and exhibition practice continues to foster public engagement and collector interest in my visual and interdisciplinary work.
In 2023, my work was profiled in The Wire Magazine in an article titled “Of Music, Mushrooms, and Machines,” which explored my integration of AI and ecological systems through the Ostoyae project. My contributions to redefining virtuosity and authorship through AI and improvisation were also highlighted in Contemporary Music Review (Jankowska, 2023).
My collaborative work with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra was featured in Music Farther Outside: Experimental Music During Brexit and the Pandemic (Shoemaker, Equinox Publishing, 2023), which includes interviews and analysis of my compositional approach. My opera Incheon was covered in a televised segment by Léman Bleu TV (Switzerland), documenting its premiere at the AiiA Festival and its use of AI for posthuman storytelling.
I also have multiple features on BBC Radio 3 (Freeness, Late Junction, New Music Show), a dedicated podcast for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and collaborations for film and radio with Café Oto, Crow Versus Crow Records, and independent filmmakers. In addition, I am the co-founder and editor of The Mass, a politically-engaged arts magazine that amplifies critical and experimental voices from underrepresented communities.
Yes, I am represented by Gallery Analix Forever in Geneva, Switzerland, and by L’association de malfaiteurs, an artist-led platform based between Geneva and Southern Africa.
Since 2021, I have worked closely with Barbara Polla, founder of Analix Forever, a gallery known for its commitment to feminist, conceptual, and cross-disciplinary practices.
In parallel, I am represented by L’association de malfaiteurs, founded by Jonathan O’Hear and collaborators as a mobile, post-disciplinary curatorial structure. This platform supports transnational, experimental works that operate outside traditional gallery models. My projects with them include participatory installations and research-based performances exploring posthuman ecologies and diasporic sonic practices, often developed through community collaboration.
Both relationships allow me to maintain a hybrid practice that moves between installation, sound, performance, and curatorial work—engaging critically with contemporary art discourse while supporting inclusive, artist-led infrastructures.
In 2025, I was selected as composer-in-residence with the Bahue Duo (USA), supported by the Springfield, Holyoke, and Haverhill Cultural Councils. This involved the development of Fronterra, a multilingual song cycle exploring Latinx identity, sonic borderlands, and postcolonial tuning systems.
In 2024, I took part in the Perempuan Komponis residency (Indonesia), culminating in the premiere of Marlaut, co-commissioned with hcmf// and presented at Taman Ismail Marzuki (Jakarta).
2023-2024 Participated in the Pro Helvetia Johannesburg residency, working with activist artist groups in Lesotho and South Africa.
2018, I was selected for the Creative Music Intensive (Tasmania), a residency hosted by the Australian Art Orchestra. There, I collaborated with musicians from Korean traditional and Australian Aboriginal traditions, deepening my understanding of intercultural improvisation and ethical artistic exchange.
Email: mariasappho@outlook.com
Address: 60 Sufton Street, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD2 2TD, GB
Local Authority: Kirklees Council
