Anna Edmonds

Key career highlights

At the forefront of 3D immersive locative audio experience design research; created and tested the first fully head-tracked ambisonic public heritage soundwalk of its kind in the UK. Awarded EPSRC funded PhD Studentship.  Develops large-scale heritage-specific soundwalk projects with museums, charities and communities, awarded Heritage Lottery Funding for recently completed locative audio project ‘Along These Lines: an immersive soundwalk exploring Brighton’s laundry heritage’.

Bio

Anna Celeste Edmonds is a Brighton-based sound artist/designer, field recordist, and researcher who has a fascination with heritage sites, landscapes, and documenting her surrounding environment. She has over 13 years of music writing, recording, and sound editing experience, with five years working on locative immersive audio experiences for mobile media. She is about to be awarded her doctorate at University of Brighton for her thesis titled ‘Designing 3D Immersive Locative Audio Experiences for Outdoor Heritage Sites’, exploring public engagement and storytelling through ambisonic compositions of music, dialogue and sound effects. She uses iterative design and public testing throughout her projects, including the community in the creation and evaluation of her audio experiences, a process uncommon in commissioned works. She prioritises versatility and accessibility in the new technology she works with, aiming to create experiences which can be enjoyed by a wide range of listeners.

She first began recording in her teen years, writing music for piano and voice which she captured with a handheld recorder, moving on to a small studio set up by the time she started her BA in Songwriting. Enjoying commercial songwriting and music to film, after her bachelors she expanded her songwriting interests into more experimental work. She gained a Distinction in MA Sound Arts from London College of Communication after completing the first of her heritage-specific audio projects. In December 2016, Dilston Gallery presented her work on ‘acoustic caretaking’ which was undertaken at Curzon Street Station in Birmingham, a historically important building at risk.

After spending time honing in her skills further, she was awarded an EPSRC funded PhD Studentship with SEAHA-CDT and University of Brighton in 2018. Her PhD research was in partnership with Echoes geolocative mobile audio application and The Regency Town House a local museum and venue at the site of Brunswick Square, Brighton & Hove. In 2019 she completed an MRes at UCL in Science and Engineering in Arts, Heritage and Archaeology as part of her research award, which expanded her heritage, conservation, and public engagement knowledge.

Throughout her doctorate, Anna has undertaken many public field tests of her work, creating two large-scale immersive audio experiences titled ‘The Golden Hours’ (2021) and ‘Re/collections (2022). She has exhibited her research, presented at conferences, published papers and has developed a broad archive of sounds and compositions which she looks forward to adapting into future works. In October 2023, she completed Heritage Lottery funded soundwalk ‘Along These Lines’ with community charity Quiet Down There, exploring themes such as the reality of working-class lives, women's work and economic independence, as well as the significance of laundries in the local area. She has another large-scale soundwalk in the pipeline titled ‘Overlord’, re-imagining the experience of young soldiers in the lead up to D-Day. Alongside her audio projects, Anna is a university lecturer at bachelors and masters level and enjoys teaching across a range of subjects covering music, production, media, innovation and design.

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