Founded in 2010 by Nick Luscombe, Musicity invites musicians and recording artists to compose tracks in response to buildings and locations in cities around the world, with the aim of supporting and promoting new music, and also to transform the experience of listening to it. Utilising expertise in architecture, music and acoustics, Musicity seeks to link broaden the link between composition and space through the agency of architecture.

Projects undertaken in 2017 & 2018 involves a series of compositions commissioned from new and interesting artists that are directly related to specific sites in Southwark.

A series of specially selected sites were visited by Flanagan Lawrence and Arup, and acoustic data has been taken from each, by way of a simple acoustic test. This test gives us key data on the acoustic performance of each site, in terms of reverberation, clarity, early decay time etc. This information, by way of a digital impulse response was then shared with the musicians, siting the process of writing music within the sonic constraints of the site itself. This process, using discussion and digital convolution, manifests itself in the resultant composition, so the resultant music is as much ‘of’ the space as defined by it.

The output of the process can be downloaded by a geotagged smartphone, and listened to ‘on site’ by a listener. This process not only creates a relinking of the relationship between music and architecture, but also a series of very special performances by new and exciting musicians, giving clues to how best to use spaces in the city for more future public use.

The project was featured on BBC Radio 4’s the Today show, and London Live’s TV news.

More information on Musicity’s projects and events can be found here.