Becoming

Becoming is a collaborative, interactive immersive artwork exploring matrescence, the profound transformation of becoming a mother, through spatial sound, moving image, haptic sculpture and the spoken experiences of mothers.

Rooted in the artists’ own lived experiences and informed by qualitative research with mothers across generations, the work draws on experiences of early motherhood as they are lived and reflected on. Becoming seeks to hold the diversity and complexity of this period, where isolation and loneliness sit alongside resilience, joy, frustration and love.

Motherhood is often idealised, yet its lived reality is less often recognised in its full emotional, physical and social complexity. Becoming creates a space in which these experiences can be encountered, held and reflected upon.

At the centre of the installation is a steel bath transformed into a resonant speaker. Associated with care, washing, domestic ritual and childhood, the bath becomes both familiar and unsettled. Sound moves through the steel, making it vibrate audibly and physically, while toys placed in and around it tip, fall and rattle against its surface. The bath becomes both object and instrument: playful, fragile and uneasy.

Audiences encounter the work through a shared sonic environment, large-scale moving image and open-back headphones. Spoken experiences of motherhood are heard intimately through the headphones and layered with sound in the room, placing individual maternal voices in tension with the collective experience of the installation.

Credits

• Helena Hamilton: Lead Artist + Producer
• Janie Doherty: Collaborating Artist – embodied practice, movement + care
• Aisling McGeown: Collaborating Artist – film + poetry
• Michael McKnight: Interaction Design – Spatial Audio + Hybrid Listening
• Isaac Gibson: Sound Production + Spatial Audio
• Funded by: Immersive Arts UK
• Support from: NI Science Festival, BIAF, Sonic Arts Research Centre QUB, Digital Catapult, Media Lab QUB.

With special thanks: to all the mothers who contributed to the research process.