Attunement       Attunement       Attunement       Attunement       Attunement       Attunement       

Attunement is an immersive, interactive, site-specific sound installation commissioned for Sound in Museums 2025 at the National Museum of Music, Mafra, Portugal, created in collaboration with Nous Sonic and CulturalMark. 

Attunement proposes an immersive sound installation for the Expressions of Power room at the Museu Nacional da Música, Mafra. Using the NOUS Sonic headphone-based spatial audio system, the work invites visitors to explore the museum’s collection through sound — transforming the act of listening into an encounter with the material and symbolic resonances of musical instruments.

Rather than presenting a fixed composition, Attunement unfolds through the agency of listening. Visitors move through the space, and their proximity to the instruments activates and modulates the sonic environment. In this way, each listener becomes a participant in the creation of the piece — composing through perception, shaping time and space through the act of listening itself.

In Attunement, listening is understood as an active, generative act — a way of engaging with the world that produces meaning rather than merely receiving it. Each visitor’s listening shapes the work’s temporal and spatial unfolding, producing an individualized yet collective experience.

This listening agency redefines the relationship between audience, artwork, and institution. Power — the thematic core of the exhibition — is here experienced not through domination or control, but through sensitivity, awareness, and relational presence. The visitor’s attention, their curiosity, and their way of inhabiting the sonic field become the forces that give form to the piece.

In this sense, Attunement transforms the museum space into a living instrument — one that resonates with history while inviting new forms of perception and shared authorship.