The Art of Sound

Wapping Hydraulic Power Station is an extraordinary site. Built in 1890, this architecturally important space has been closed for 14 years. Now under the new custodianship of Glass Castle Foundation, it played host to two spatial sound installations by L-Acoustics. ‘We thought it would be special to reimagine the space as a contemporary cultural power station, where sound powers design, emotion and collective experience. This allows the space to become a living sonic environment across multiple days for a shared spatial sound experience from different artistic perspectives,’ explains Mundinger.

For Diana Spiegelberg, CEO, Glass Castle Foundation, ‘Wapping Hydraulic Power Station is a building that oozes with history and speaks to the many layers of London's industrial heritage.’ She adds: ‘It is also a gift to artists as it sparks so many ideas and invites a sense of possibility in terms of how they respond to and play with the space. It is remarkable that the power station is still there, undeveloped as a raw canvas for artistic experimentation.’

First up, L-Acoustics chose to work with multi-disciplinary artist Max Cooper. His piece, Feeling is Structure draws inspiration from the relationship between physical form, perception and experience. The result is an inhabitable sonic environment where sound envelops the listener. He explains: ‘I spend a lot of time in abstract structures through my music and visual shows; there’s an intimate web between our feeling and structures both internal and external. In the West we’re still quite deeply tied to dualism and some separation of what we are from the world outside. Connecting the two as one and the same can be helpful in much less abstract ways, how we engage with our environment.’

Artist Chris Watson also presented an installation, with inspiration drawn from a journey down the Humber estuary. ‘I watched the cargo vessel ‘Paper Moon’ depart the docks at Goole and sail down the Humber estuary on the ebbing tide and imagined how that voyage might sound from the ship as it passed all the sound marks on its journey to the sea at Spurn Point,’ he explains.  Adding to this atmospheric piece, ‘The wildlife sounds aim to create oases on the voyage between the urban and industrial soundtracks.’

Also featuring in the programme was a collaboration with The Alliance for Women Film Composers. In 2025, L-Acoustics commissioned original pieces of work; a call was held to member composers, with eight composers chosen. Composers were then given full creative freedom to create an original composition using L-ISA as a tool to mix their compositions spatially. ‘Each piece is original and personal to the composer,’ explains Mundinger.

Mundinger hopes that each visitor found their own journey through the project. ‘At its heart, we want people to lean into the opportunity to encounter sound through a range of artistic perspectives, in a space that is itself architecturally significant,’ she explains. Spiegelberg adds: ‘Our vision is to bring this iconic building back to life as a destination for expansive experimental arts and culture. We hope it will become somewhere that encourages audiences to try out new things and to experience work that is hard to categorise.’

Ultimately, this project is about recalibrating pre-conceptions. ‘More than anything, I hope this shifts the way people think about sound, as more than something we hear, but as a fundamental design material that can shape atmosphere, emotion, movement and connection,’ says Mundinger.

Words by Tamsin Kingswell