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Architectural Listening:
A Sonic Response to J. Yolande Daniels: To A Future Space-Time


This work is an improvised sonic response to J. Yolande Daniels’ exhibition To A Future Space-Time, created and performed live by Tru Sound. Centered on Leimert Park, the performance investigates how Black communities assert autonomy through space-making, memory, and rhythm—how sound becomes a method for mapping place.



The composition was built entirely in real time, drawing from a constellation of sonic materials, including:
  • Field recordings from Leimert Park—street textures, distant drums, conversations, passing cars, open-air vendors, community space atmospheres
  • Environmental and architectural recordings, capturing reflections, corridors, and urban resonance
  • Found audio fragments gathered from neighborhood activity and cultural spaces
  • Live modular synthesis, shaping evolving tones, pulses, and textures
  • Granular processing to stretch, fracture, and reassemble sound into new spatial forms
  • Tape delays, reverb, pitch and time modulation, used to bend physical and emotional space
  • Live vocal recordings, looped and manipulated into atmospheric layers
  • Real-time sound design and re-composition in Ableton 12, edited manually on the spot


 

The work investigates how Black communities engineer their own spatial futures: through improvisation, collective memory, and the ability to reorganize the terms of architecture through sound.
Inspired by Daniels’ practice, Tru Sound reimagines urban space as an instrument—one capable of echoing lineage, resistance, and self-determined design.

This sonic response emerges from questions at the center of the exhibition:
  • How do Black communities create spatial autonomy?
  • What does a neighborhood remember?
  • How does sound carry the imprint of a people navigating, shaping, and imagining future space-times?

This project contributes to a larger body of research investigating the spatial and temporal strategies of Black communities. Through sound, fieldwork, and live composition, the work expands the dialogue initiated by To A Future Space-Time, offering a sonic lens into the rhythms, histories, and futures embedded in the built environment.

Concept + Live Composition: Philip Patrick Harper Bucknor [Tru]
Field Recordings + Research: SNDMNDBDY
Presented in dialogue with: To A Future Space-Time by J. Yolande Daniels
Venue: Art + Practice