Historian Sofia Cissé Akel travels to Southern Senegal to trace her family through traditional musical storytelling. Touré, a village elder, introduces Sofia to a Griot who can help her recall the lineage of her family name, Cissé. The process reconnects a family that was once disconnected across historic colonial borders.

Premiering 6 November | City Screen York

A filmmaker discovers a 1964 casette recording of his great-grandfather reciting a Scots poem, but the thick Scots dialect makes it difficult to understand. Curious to decipher the audio, he travels to Blyth Bridge, where the poem was first written. There, he plays the cassette to residents, who are invited to interpret what they can hear.

Premiering 6 November | City Screen York

“Charming”, “grunting”, “fiddling” or “rooping” is a method of luring earthworms up from the ground using sound and vibration. In the UK, the practice has taken a competitive turn. Worm Charming plunges the audience into the sensory world of worms, who have no eyes or ears but listen instead through their whole-body cochlea.

Premiering 6 November | City Screen York

Silent cinema was never truly silent. Early film screenings were often accompanied by live musicians, improvised sound and audiences. With this commission, Aesthetica and Audible invite composers and sound designers to rediscover that tradition As part of Listening Pitch 2026: Radical Listening, this open call asked artists to create inventive new scores for pre-1925 silent films. Each selected artist received a £1,000 grant to create their score, with the completed works premiering as part of Aesthetica Film Festival. There will be live performances as part of this event, followed by a panel and Q&A. Featuring: Rhythmus 21, Bowen Wu; Symphonie Diagonale, Théo DG; Opus I II III I, Amelie Lingard; Anémic cinéma, Chloe Simmons; The Great Train Robbery, Aidan Steele; Ballet Ballet Mécanique, Fintan O’Hare.

Discover a brand new work by acclaimed light, sound and technology pioneers Squidsoup (Alexandra Palace, Burning Man Festival, Canary Wharf, Sydney Opera House, Vivid Sydney). The Sound of Coming Back to Life combines a recording made using processed electric upright bass with a new generative visual landscape.The result is a visceral and immersive experience for audiences to encounter outside York Art Gallery.

Artist and musician Rowe suffered a cardiac arrest last year, remaining unresponsive with no heartbeat for several minutes – effectively dead – until he was resuscitated. He remembers nothing of dying, but has a vivid and clear recollection of returning to consciousness. He captures this experience in this recording, made a few weeks after the event. 

Fruere Silentio is a large-scale temporary inflatable art installation by renowned environmental artist Steve Messam, whose works are characterised by their vibrant use of colour, form and impressive scale, often described as “bigger than a house.” 

The modular structure creates a number of secluded spaces, within which discrete speakers can be heard at close range. The soundscape is a four-minute multi-part vocal score to be experienced on visitors’ own Bluetooth headphones. The audio is “a document of the city”: sung and recorded in each of the 20 remaining medieval church buildings within York’s city walls, plus the Minster.

Being Now Here is the brandchild of Gemma Wood, established as a space for collaboration and the creation of impactful work for festivals and exhibitions. Wood specialises in immersive environments, sculptures and interactive installations – all designed to get audiences thinking and pondering the bigger questions.

Henge invites us to “experience listening as a shift in perspective” – painting a picture through sound, revealing echoes of memory and connection. Conceived as “a cinematic journey through time”, the installation evokes different periods and experiences: from the rhythms of the cityscape and nature, to traces of human presence.