Compositions for the Pool

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Compositions for the Pool is an immersive, site-specific sound work by LAAP (lead artists Morgan Hickinbotham and Bek Berger) that transforms a public swimming pool into a living composer — a place where memory, community and acoustic ecology are transcribed into an intimate sonic score. Conceived through grounded fieldwork and community engagement at Prahran Aquatic Centre in Melbourne, the project gathers the pool’s naturally occurring sounds, conversations and memory-stories, sculpts them into an electronic composition, and then translates those sonic materials back into classical notation for live musicians. Swimmers can then experience the work in situ using waterproof headphones, listening to a composition literally made by — and for — the pool.

Process & research: LAAP developed the work during a residency at Prahran Aquatic Centre where the artists spent consecutive weeks swimming, recording, and interviewing local swimmers to build a sonic portrait of the site. Field recordings were analysed for emergent harmonic and rhythmic material; those spectral and textural discoveries were elaborated into an electronic score, and selective patterns were transcribed into notated parts. By collaborating with a local volunteer orchestra — the Stonnington Symphony — the notated material was rehearsed, recorded and re-contextualised as chamber textures that retain the timbral and spatial character of the pool. This method of translation — site → field recording → electronic composition → classical notation → live performance — is central to LAAP’s practice of moving sound between states and communities.

Presentation & audience experience: The public launch in February 2019 invited pool users to swim while wearing waterproof headphones supplied on site, making the experience simultaneously private and communal: each listener is immersed in an individually delivered score while sharing the same physical water and environment with others. Sessions ran across multiple daily time-slots and attracted hundreds of participants, reframing everyday laps as a choreographed, contemplative listening event. The work’s accessibility and playful reworking of civic infrastructure position it both as a social artwork and as a renewed model for how sound can activate public space.

Collaborators, craft & aesthetic: The project credits list LAAP’s composition and production (Morgan Hickinbotham), production assistance (Matilda Berger), design (Studio Hi Ho), and photography by Morgan Hickinbotham. The Stonnington Symphony — a volunteer-led local ensemble — performed on the recorded and notated material, with players including violin, viola, oboe, clarinet and cello/double bass. The resulting sonic texture preserves field-recording timbres while embedding them in the resonance of classical instruments, creating a hybrid listening world that privileges both place and people.

Context, lineage & development: Compositions for the Pool sits within LAAP’s broader practice of translating phenomena from one state to another (for example, their earlier project Reflection, which worked with dream-generated electronic material). LAAP’s approach is informed by residencies and comparative research into bathing and water cultures — including time spent in Japan and Iceland where the artists further honed field-recording and listening techniques — which enriched their sensitivity to bathing as a cultural and sonic practice. The project’s compositional choices foreground minimal, textural and spectral approaches that emphasize place-based resonance over overt virtuosity.

Reception & trajectory: After its Melbourne launch in 2019 (with over two hundred participants), Compositions for the Pool received international presentation at the Sansusī alternative chamber-music festival in Latvia for its European premiere in 2021, demonstrating the adaptability of the format and the work’s capacity to translate local specificity into broader festival contexts. The project was supported locally by the City of Stonnington and realised through close partnerships with Prahran Aquatic Centre and St Martins Youth Arts Centre — institutional alliances that enabled LAAP to embed artistic practice within community infrastructure.

Conceptual significance: The work reverses common paradigms of composition in an era of digital mediation: rather than starting with live instruments and producing electronic afterlives, LAAP lets a physical site produce raw material that is sculpted electronically and then reclaimed by notation and human performance. This cyclical movement between analogue environment, digital processing, and human playback highlights tensions between private perception and shared public life, between the temporality of swimming and the relative persistence of recorded sound. By making the pool both subject and medium, the project invites audiences to reconsider everyday places as archives of memory and communal identity.

Composition: Morgan Hickinbotham
Curation & Production: Bek Berger
Production Assistant: Matilda Berger
Music made in collaboration with The Stonnington Symphony

Musicians: Paul Boasman (Violin), David Chan (Violin/Viola), Helen Henzell (Violin), David Laity (Clarinet), Emma Ridout (Oboe) and Dennis Vaughan (Cello/Double Bass)

Photography: Morgan Hickinbotham
Graphic Design: Studio Hi Ho

Compositions for the pool has been supported by the City of Stonnington through their annual arts and cultural grants. The work couldn't have been made without the support of Prahran Aquatic Centre and St Martins Youth Arts Centre who both provided residencies.

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