Material, Sound, Thought

Our programming brings together visual artists, musicians, educators, and researchers who are interested in process. Each discipline contributes tools, language, and methods that deepen the work of the others.

The result is a practical and reflective environment where people learn by making, listening, and discussing.

Four Disciplines, One Conversation

The Spiritual Cabaret framework draws on four areas of practice, each contributing something the others need:

• Visual art brings material intuition — knowledge that lives in the hands, in surface and texture, in the choice of scale and medium
• Music brings temporal structure — rhythm, silence, tension and release, and listening as an active skill
• Science brings rigour and humility — the willingness to test assumptions, record observations, and accept unexpected results
• Technology brings new instruments — digital and analogue tools that extend what artists can hear, see, make, and share

None of these disciplines is sufficient on its own. Together they create conditions for genuinely interdisciplinary work.

Sound as Visual Material

One of our most productive entry points is the relationship between sound and image. Artists from Kandinsky to Alvin Lucier have explored it — it remains productive precisely because it resists resolution.

“I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves.”

— Alvin Lucier, I Am Sitting in a Room (1969)

In our workshops we use several approaches to make this relationship tangible:

1. Spectrogram drawing — participants listen to a short piece of music and draw what they hear, then compare their drawings to a software-generated spectrogram of the same recording
2. Score-making — participants create graphic scores for short improvisations, then trade scores and perform each other’s work
3. Contact microphones — participants amplify the sounds of drawing, sculpting, and building materials, making the sonic dimension of visual practice audible
4. Field recording — participants capture the ambient sound of the neighbourhood and use it as source material for both visual and musical responses

A Simple Frequency Experiment

In our science-inflected sessions we sometimes begin with a basic experiment in acoustics. Here is a minimal version you can try in any browser console using the Web Audio API:

const ctx = new (window.AudioContext || window.webkitAudioContext)();

function playTone(frequency, startTime = 0, duration = 1) {
  const osc = ctx.createOscillator();
  const gain = ctx.createGain();

  osc.connect(gain);
  gain.connect(ctx.destination);

  osc.frequency.value = frequency;
  gain.gain.setValueAtTime(0.3, ctx.currentTime + startTime);
  gain.gain.exponentialRampToValueAtTime(0.001, ctx.currentTime + startTime + duration);

  osc.start(ctx.currentTime + startTime);
  osc.stop(ctx.currentTime + startTime + duration);
}

// A staggered C major chord — C4, E4, G4
playTone(261.63, 0.0);
playTone(329.63, 0.3);
playTone(392.00, 0.6);

Running this plays three sine waves timed 300ms apart. It is a small experiment, but it illustrates acoustic science directly: frequency ratios, timbre, and the physics of vibration as lived experience.

Recent Work: Graphic Scores

The image below shows graphic scores produced during our spring workshop series. Participants were given no instructions beyond: make something a musician could use.

Graphic score workshop — Roncesvalles neighbourhood space, March 2026. Click to enlarge.

Technology as a Shared Tool

Technology in our framework is not a separate domain — it is a set of instruments available to everyone in the room. Practically, this means:

• Free and open-source audio tools such as Audacity and Sonic Pi, so participants are not locked into commercial platforms
• Analogue-digital hybrids — working with paper, then digitising and manipulating, then returning to paper
• Documentation tools — simple video and audio recording that makes process visible over time
• Low-barrier code — short scripts like the one above that demystify the technology without requiring prior expertise

The goal is not polished digital artefacts. The goal is to use the tools as extensions of inquiry.

Watch: Sound and Image in Dialogue

This short documentary from the Tate explores how artists have worked with the relationship between sound and visual practice — directly relevant to the methods we use in our own programming.

Join a Session

Our next interdisciplinary workshop takes place in Parkdale in June 2026. No experience in any discipline is required — only curiosity and a willingness to work in public. Register your interest.