Dr Lucy Harrison

Lucy is a composer and sound designer specialising in interactive sound and music. She focuses on the use of new technology and electronics and through this she creates immersive soundscapes, interactive sound installations and sound and music for theatre. She has a PhD in composition from Royal Holloway, University of London, where she investigated audience engagement and how audience roles change in interactive sound installations through three interactive installations.

Recent works includes a library themed puzzle game, an interactive blanket fort complete with a musical hopscotch, made with conductive paint, and motion sensitive sound created using gaming controllers. Within her soundscapes she works with found sound that is manipulated within software systems to create new sonic possibilities, building on the legacy of composers such as Delia Derbyshire and Trevor Wishart.

Lucy has created sound for immersive and interactive theatre productions, including creating interactive embroidery for a National Trust production, a touch-sensitive bookcase for a piece about libraries and reading and sound and music for a critically acclaimed production of Elizabeth Inchbald’s The Massacre in Peckham (‘Til We Meet in England, 2017). She works to build strong, collaborative relationships with designers and directors and through this works to investigate new ideas and ways to embed interaction into productions.

Her current research is investigating how games audio techniques can be applied to interactive and immersive theatre and how to guide audience members through applied sound. This work is being developed through new sound installations and theatre productions and has been presented nationally and internationally. 

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.