Emma-Kate Matthews is an architect, composer, musician and researcher at UCL. Her work explores creative reciprocities between sonic and spatial disciplines through the composition and performance of site-specific and spatialised projects. In addition to composing on the London Symphony Orchestra’s Panufnik scheme (2022), her work has been performed internationally at acoustically distinctive sites such as the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, London’s Southbank Centre, the Barbican Centre and Brighton Festival.
Emma-Kate’s approach to composition combines electronic and acoustic methodologies and instrumentation, by using a range of bespoke digital tools and physical instruments that she codes and designs herself, respectively. Her electronic music presents a rich tapestry of field recordings alongside synthesised and recorded acoustic instrumentation, often using binaural and ambisonic recording tools to enable immersive 3D playback.
She has released a number of solo electronic and classical-fusion works including Similis on Musicity Global (2019) Far Flung on Algebra Records (2020), and Remote Overlap on NMC Records (2021). In addition to being a multi-instrumentalist, she also designs and makes her own sonic instruments. In 2021, she was nominated for the Lumen prize for Art and Technology for her project Resonant Bodies and she has also been nominated for the Aesthetica art prize 2022. Her bespoke instruments are exhibited at the Works + Words Architecture Biennale at the Roundtower in Copenhagen, and she recently produced an audio-visual piece for the Cities and Memory Polar Sounds project, using recordings of sea ice from the Antarctic.