Extra Sonic Practice (ESP) (ESP) is a curatorial research project. ESP are a group of scholars and artists from the University of Lincoln who work with sound in multiple contexts and configurations. Playfully and knowingly (re)appropriating the abbreviation from its origin – Extra Sensory Perception – ESP is a response to the growing prevalence of sound within various disciplinary contexts.

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‘Sounding Borders’ (2022-2023) is a research and practice-based project that questions how borders are shaped, controlled and embodied through sound. The public research events have been taking place in Lincoln and included a listening workshop with a sound artist and researcher Pedro Oliveira, an interactive soundwalk, a critical excursion, a sound writing workshop, a listening walk and an exhibition. Audiences have been listening to local-global borders, exploring how everyday public and private spaces are policed and bordered sonically. The events aim to reflect critically on their migration experiences and the materiality of borders. The project, working at the intersections of sound studies, creative practice and decolonial geopolitical debates, engage the public in questions of sound, community and globality.

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'Sounding Borders #1: DESMONTE (To Become Undone)'

'Sounding Borders #2: Eugene Birman'

'Sounding Borders #3: Social Listening'

'Sounding Borders #4: River Witham Listening Walk'

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‘Tuning’ (2019) is a series of workshops, talks and experimental interventions that aim to interrogate the metaphor of ‘tuning’ beyond its musical framing. 'Tuning' events interrogate how different forms of socio-political and affective acts of tuning have and continue to shape histories, social systems, institutions as well as political structures. In line with a feminist writer Sara Ahmed, who argues that: ‘the note heard as out of tune is not only the note that is heard most sharply but the note that ruins the whole tune’ (2017, 87), the events use the concepts of ‘attunement’/‘in tune’/‘out of tune’ as a meeting point for addressing the following question: what does it mean to be ‘in tune’ or 'out of tune’? How do the processes of ‘tuning’ affect our ‘place’ in the world?

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'Tuning #3: A Sonic Nip and Tuck?'

'Tuning #2: Sounds of the Stars'

'Tuning #1: Necessary Note: A Sonic Detective Novel