Somnambience: composing restful spaces for overstimulating times

This paper offers a conceptual and methodological overview of Sleep Through, a series of soundscape compositions for the Australian Broadcasting Association that were created for the purposes of helping listeners – originally children, but later a general audience – unwind and sleep. The paper asks what role such sonic practices might have in offering listeners respite in an era often perceived as being characterized by intensified sensory and cognitive stimulation. Drawing upon Félix Guattari’s framework for understanding wellbeing as constituted by the intersection of environmental, social, and mental ecologies, the paper examines how Sleep Through utilized compositional techniques that aimed to perform subtle interventions across each of these three domains. The paper introduces the term “somnambience” to describe remediated acoustic spaces that are incorporated into everyday life to support restfulness and sleep.