[NIME26 Workshop] The Third Bank of the River Lea: Second Call for Participants!
Courtney Reed
(Apologies for any cross-posting; feel free to circulate!)
The Third Bank of the River Lea:
We invite attendees, ecologists, researchers, designers, musicians, artists, creative practitioners, and everyone else to this full-day, in-person workshop at the 2026 New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference (NIME) in London, UK. Together, we’ll discuss and engage with the multiple identities, phases, and histories of waterbodies. To explore the practicalities of human-machine-water relationships, we’ll take a listening sound walk alongside the Lee Navigation canals in East London, near the Loughborough University London (LUL) host campus. During our day out, we’ll query the plural perspectives that make up the River Lea and its diversion along the Lee Navigation, as a greater entity beyond the physical waterway, and how these can be listened to and engaged with through sound and audio technologies.
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Workshop Outline:
Participants will explore relationships and interact with the river in many ways, asking whether and how sound technology can foster respectability and non-hierarchical relations with these ecosystems and our world more broadly.
We will explore together how sonic practices in sounding, listening, and recording shape our sensory experiences and relationships to waterbodies and ecological factors. Together, we’ll foster ecological sensibilities based on listening and care and connect
these sensibilities to a broader discussion about urbanised waterbodies and how sound and sonic technologies shape our relationship to them.
Together, we’ll create narrative accounts about how and what we have discovered, shared, and or engaged with when listening to the river. We’ll will promote a collective listening walk alongside the Lee Navigation canal as it moves towards its reunification with the rest of the River Lea, where we end our walk. Working in small groups, we’ll explore critical ecological themes and create, capture, and attune to sonic experiences of this waterbody in London.
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Registration:
Sign-up is done on a first-come-first-served basis until we reach our cap of 20 participants or the registration deadline, whichever comes first.
More information and registration can be found on the Workshop Site here: https://thechaoslab.github.io/thirdbank/
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Important Dates:
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Registration Deadline: 19 June, 23:59 (AOE, Anywhere on Earth time)
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Workshop: 23 June, 09:00–17:00
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NIME Conference: 24 - 26 June 2026
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Contact:
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to get in touch with Courtney (c.n.reed[at]lboro.ac.uk) or Vitória (v.croda-pinto[at]lboro.ac.uk).
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Ania Mokrzycka (Loughborough University London)
Luiz Ribeiro Fonseca (Loughborough University London)
Vitória Croda (Loughborough University London)
Karina Townsend (Independent Artist & Researcher)
Inês Nolasco (Earth Species Project)
Courtney N. Reed (Loughborough University London)
Loughborough University London
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