Based on interviews with 40 city centre residents about the views from their windows, this dispersed, digital portrait of Exeter uses a range of social and participatory art practice, to gently explore the meeting points of public and private space. We worked with associate artists, students and Exeter residents to make This City’s Centre in three main parts – 1. Window, a two channel video installation, 2. Linger, an interactive map and 3. Here, Now, a performance held in an empty, city centre office space with live webcam streaming from the homes of community participants. During the development of the work we experienced and shared life in This City’s Centre from new and surprising angles – from the privacy of other people’s homes – through other people’s eyes. Inviting us to think more deeply about how daily life in this … and any British provincial city, can shape us, provoke us, define us. www.blindditch.org/portfolio-items…s-citys-centre/

Window, Pt. III

Window, Pt. III – audio from the video installation by Blind Ditch

Cattle Grids Of Dartmoor (excerpt)

Spanning January 2000 to November 2002, Sounding Dartmoor was
an environmentally orientated public-arts project taking the sounds of
Dartmoor National Park, in the South West of England, as its field of inquiry – those of its people, places and habitats, in one word, its soundscape. It was initiated by a grant secured from Arts Council of England by the Touring Exhibition of Sound Environments (TESE), and brought together a number of
organisations: TESE, the Digital Crowd (University of Plymouth) and
Aune Head Arts (based in Princetown in the middle of Dartmoor). The project was coordinated by John Levack Drever. These soundscapes were recorded by the group over this time period.

Fox Hunt In Progress Near Hound Tor, March 2002

Burrator Waterfall, September 2002

Dartmoor Railway, Meldon, April 2002

Higher Foxworthy, Poundsgate - Start Of A Meet Of The South Devon Hunt, April 2002

Loch Ness Stream

Loch Ness Stream 2

Annoying sound of the day, Monday, 22nd November 2021. Binaural recording.

London Bridge Escalator

Ochlophonic Study: Hong Kong

Tim & Mairead Robinson Memorial Event - speeches at Roundstone House

The set off of the last London to Brighton Mini Run, 20th May 2023 recorded by Cheam Recreation Ground, London. 

The Last London to Brighton Mini Run

Dawn fieldrecording in Nonsuch Park photobombed by grey squirrels. 13th April 2024

Springtime Grey Squirrels (Nonsuch Park at Dawn April 2024)

A creative response through sound to the life and work of Tim Robinson (1935-2020) – cartographer, artist, painter, mathematician, writer, polymath, known in the 1960s London art scene as Timothy Drever. The portmanteau title bridges Tim’s series of paintings shown in London in 1968, ‘Dreams of Euclid’ and his first published writing on the West Coast of Ireland, ‘Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara’, from 1984. This project was sparked by the discovery of the third painting from his 'Dreams of Euclid' series, found at the back of Tim’s studio in Roundstone, Connemara. 

First exhibited in a solo show at the Lisson Gallery, London in 1968, the work is a meticulously crafted geometric composition rendered in acrylic paint. In the composition, we hear Tim talking about and re-enacting the mark-making of the large circles made in one slow, unbroken movement. Over the decades, the painting has suffered severe damage from high tide flooding from the Atlantic. Yet through the patina and erosion, a new kind of beauty is unfolding – one that reveals a more elemental, timeworn version of the original work, echoing Tim’s lifelong affinity with nature, pattern, and existence. 

The piece interweaves sonic textures generated from a VCS4 synthesiser – a rare instrument built in the same year the painting was completed – with field recordings of the encroaching tidewater against the windows and felt through the very walls, interspersed with hydrophone recordings made at Roundstone Quay on the day following his ashes were scattered, together with those of his partner Máiréad.

Framing this evolving soundscape is a shared intimate moment: Tim reenacting in the air the embodied gesture of painting a vast circle in a single breath – an act that speaks to the confluence of geometry, movement, and presence that marked his way of being. This work becomes both meditation and homage – a resonant portrait of a mind shaped by pattern, place, and a lifelong critical inquiry into the natural world.

It is intended that the sound work is presented alongside the painting. 

The first version of 'Setting Foot on the Dreams of Euclid' was presented at ‘In Focus: Tim Robinson's Life & Work’, Áras Nua-Ealaíne na hÉireann / The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, 10 August 2023. This reworked stereo version was made in October 2025. 

This is Drever's third response to visual art, following earlier projects created in dialogue with and presented alongside the paintings of Sandra Blow (1997) and Shuji Okada (2012).

Setting Foot on the Dreams of Euclid [Tim Robinson / Timothy Drever]

Hand Dryer Noise in corridor to Cambridge Services' WCs (October 2021)

Dan Dryer #1

Dan Dryer #2

Dan Dryer #3

Dan Dryer #4

98 voices emulating/mimicking/impersonating/singing/sounding Denmark’s Dan Dryer, Turbo Design model. 

A participative and creative approach that contributes to an ongoing study into the noise effects of ultra-fast hand dryers on users with sensitive hearing and special auditory needs, such as children, older people, tinnitus and hyperacusis sufferers. Hearing models used in design and legislation are predicated on the notion of a healthy person aged between 18 to 25 years. What about the hearing of an 8 year old child on the autistic spectrum or a partially sighted hearing aid user in their 70s? In ayre #2[Dan Dryer] you can hear a wide range of voices from a 2 year old child to older people in their 80s. In such projects Drever seeks for a greater consciousness of aural diversity, a departure from our default understanding of an idealised, perfect hearing, a model of hearing that he calls the auraltypical. 

Thanks to Radar, Godsbanen and Aarhus University.  And special thanks to all those who contributed their voices including Class 1.B at Rosenvangsskolen, Aarhus and St Barnabas Choir, Dulwich, London.

https://vimeo.com/171068424

sanitary tones: ayre #2[Dan Dryer] - documentation

Voice and Words - Alaric Sumner (1952-2000)
Electroacoustic Sound - John Levack Drever

Composed for the Liverpool Biannual of Contemporary Art

sound (1999)

Voice and Words: Alaric Sumner (1952-2000)
Electroacoustic Sound: John Levack Drever
Composed for International Symposium on Electronic Arts 98, Revolution in Liverpool

hope (1998)

Suikinkutsu, Taizo-In Temple, Kyoto
Recorded 19th April 2012

Suikinkutsu, Taizo-In Temple, Kyoto

The piece is finished once all the ropes have been stored.

I made multiple recordings of this performance event every Sunday afternoon between swimming training and water polo, each with its own unique style. Then one week the same procedure of winding up the lanes was carried out but with no sonic accompaniment – someone had oiled the storage reel.

Score for Swimming Pool Lane Ropes Storage Reel

Otohime by TOTO

Wednesday morning (starting from c. 6.15am) springtime residential soundscape from the suburbs of South London during the first lockdown. The recording presents the entire refuse collection sequence from the point of audition of my bedroom. The bin lorry turns into the top of the street, gradually moves down the street passing by my bedroom window where the microphones are positioned, and steadily disappears from within earshot. The bin lorry refuse mechanism generates a noise more in place in Jurassic Park, which a touch of WD-40 could eliminate. Remarkably, I would normally sleep through this, but during the first lockdown the soundscape got “louder” despite the usual incessant drone of traffic noise dropping away.

Winner of the Worst Sound: A sound that should never have been made or that should have been designed better, Sound of the Year Awards 2020. https://www.soundoftheyearawards.com/ 

​

covid crepusculars #1

Collaboration with Choreographer, Tony Thatcher; John Drever, sound; Emma Redding, performer; Film, Madoka Furuhashi. Premiered on Kingsdown Beach, Kent, 2006.

Video: https://vimeo.com/70930154

-scape [Goodwin Sands]

The first étude in a suite of hand dryer sound energy studies, in this case inspecting the Dyson Airblade. An airblade, with c. 2 years of use, was recorded in BRE's large anechoic chamber, over a reflecting plane, with a measurement microphone. Ex-situ recording allows us to capture the inherent sound energy of the device independent of an acoustic environment, such as the highly reflective public washroom. The work slowly unfolds shards of frequency band extracted from the densely compacted, turbulent white noise generated from the 10 second cycle of interfering parallel air sheets traveling at 400 mph. Dramatic fluctuation in the spectrum are due to the interjection of the hands shortening the journey of the air sheets, reflecting the air back at the casing, causing further mutual interference. The sanitary tones suite forms a creative response to a larger project investigating the noise effects of high-speed hand dryers on users with sensitive hearing and special auditory needs.

sanitary tones: ayre #1 [Airblade] (2013)

The Litany of the Hand Dryers [sung] - excerpt

John Levack Drever is a researcher and practitioner engaged in the critical and creative study of sound, listening, and hearing, with particular attention to their cultural, ecological, and phenomenological dimensions across society. He is Creative Director of Otoloci, an ambiance and soundscape consultancy, and leads Working Group 1 for COST Action CA23145, Architectural and Urban Ambiances of European Cities and co-directs the Cambridge branch of LAURA (Leverhulme Trust Aural Diversity Doctoral Research Hub). He is preparing plans to mark the centenary of London Street Noises (1928–2028).

Between 2007 and 2012, John investigated the soundscapes of public toilets, where the widespread use of ‘ecological’ hand dryers had created a hostile environment for many. This work led him to advocate for a new paradigm of hearing, which he termed auraldiversity—shifting from an otological notion of “normal” hearing to a socio-cultural understanding of auraltypical hearing. His inclusive agenda of auraldiversity now shapes thinking across music, sound studies, acoustics, and urban design. First presented at Harvard University in 2015, these ideas have since gained momentum, influencing research (AHRC Network, RMA 2020, Internoise 2022, Urban Sound Symposium 2023), policy (DEFRA, Welsh Government), and industry practice (ReSound, ARUP, Anderson Acoustics). With Prof. Andrew Hugill, he co-directs the Aural Diversity Project and co-edited Aural Diversity (Routledge, 2022).

An avid soundwalker and field recordist,John grounds his practice in acoustic ecology. Following his PhD in composition at Dartington College of Arts, he coordinated Sounding Dartmoor: A Participative Soundscape Study. In 1998, he co-founded the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community, affiliated with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and chaired Sound Practice (Dartington, 2001), the UK’s first conference dedicated to soundscapes. He has also contributed a sonic perspective to many urban place studies with the Academy of Urbanism.

John has collaborated with Rachel Gomme, Yvonne McGuinness, Alice Oswald, Alaric Sumner, Tony Thatcher, Lawrence Upton, Tony Whitehead (RSPB), Louise K. Wilson, Suiji Okada, and comedian Mark Kelly, and is a member of Blind Ditch.

John Levack Drever

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