Matter, process, and sound: A hybrid practice across art and science

<ns3:p> Listening to the Becoming of Matter <ns3:italic>“ The materiality of sound is not a thing, but an event.”</ns3:italic> <ns3:italic>— Salomé Voegelin</ns3:italic> <ns3:italic>“ Sound is not the object but the event of its possibility.”</ns3:italic> <ns3:italic>— Salomé Voegelin, Sonic Possible Worlds</ns3:italic> <ns3:italic>“Matter, Process, and Sound: A Hybrid Practice Across Art and Science”</ns3:italic> explores an artistic research practice where materials are treated not as passive substances but as active sonic organisms. Drawing on Salomé Voegelin’s sonic materialism, Organism-Oriented Ontology (Hustak &amp; Myers), and theories of assemblage (Deleuze &amp; Guattari; Anderson &amp; McFarlane), this study investigates how clay, graphite, conductive matter and sound circuits can be wired into dynamic systems that both perform and reveal the processes of transformation. Through handbuilt electronics and sculptural experimentation, the work listens to matter as it dries, cracks, resists, and conducts, translating these material negotiations into rhythms, pulses, and frequencies. This article situates this practice at the intersection of visual art, sound art, and scientific inquiry, reflecting on the temporality and instability of substances as a form of composition. Matter is understood not as an inert medium, but as a participant in sympoietic assemblages — entangled ecologies of human and nonhuman, organic and inorganic, technical, and atmospheric. In this way, the studio has become a hybrid site of chemistry, alchemy, and sonic experimentation, where listening is a method of attending to the becoming of materials. The culmination of this research is presented in <ns3:italic>Dielectrics</ns3:italic> , a sound-visual installation and live performance created during a residency at DA LAB in Sofia. Here, conductive clays and handmade circuits generate evolving sonic environments shaped by humidity, touch, and time, inviting audiences into a collective act of listening. The work demonstrates how composition can function simultaneously as an experiment, ecology, and philosophy — a sonic materialism of practice where sound makes the agency and temporality of matter palpable. </ns3:p>