Waiting Room is an installation exploring the sonic realm of a conscious mind as it enters the process of the shutting down of the body. Within the illuminated space of the black box, a binaural soundscape takes the listener into locations the dying self must face before its final days and hours; a journey through the alienating space of hospital wards.

Attempting to detach listeners from the familiar, the sound design explores both what is obvious and what is unknown, portraying distortions of reality representing hallucinations created by the mind - a universal phenomenon experienced at the end of its functioning.

Aiming to convey the relationship of the dying self with the outside world, the process of becoming an object, a source of confusion, repulsion and fear, Waiting Room offers a listening experience presented through the isolated and incapacitated perspective of the dying self as it becomes enveloped in a sense of otherness. Hearing is recognised as one of the last (and first) functioning senses of the human mind, therefore, when there is no response, there may still be perception. Questioning whether this perception is equal to presence , and where notions of the self begin and, most importantly, end, the soundscape based work
invites participants to explore the impact of presence through the passive and helpless experience of absence.

The use of illumination, animated through sound, plays an important role in the piece. Light, flashing in rhythm and response to the sonic elements (as in the physical installation), resembles
human emotion and rhythmicality of changing pulse, whilst its fading in and out, marks the points of the self’s presence and disappearance, reflecting one’s own shape onto the wall observed ahead. The bright and cold light strip, resembles the flickering bulbs of hospital surroundings. The black box, devoid of external sound and light and locked from the outside, necessitates participation in the moment, as listeners are left vulnerable, with nothing but the sound and light provided to them in an environment of sensory deprivation. This is mirrored in the composition itself, utilising silence and stillness to represent the void; the nothingness.

As the second most obvious event in human life next to birth, death remains a mostly silenced, avoided and feared subject in both education and general conversation. Waiting Room seeks to open up the dialogue around the subject and highlight the importance of social awareness surrounding notions of the self during the end of life process. The installation underlines the difficulty of conscious dying, typical for terminal illnesses, when the time between receiving a medical result ( a death sentence ) and the end , remains misinterpreted and undefined.


There is life, and then there’s silence.
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Composed and created by Natalia Mamcarczyk, based on personal perspective and sonic experience of death. Previously presented at the Watershed, Bristol as part of dBs Music Innovation in Sound exhibition. Recording locations: Bristol Royal Infirmary, UK; Kraków & Zagórze, PL.