EXPERIMENTS IN SOUND AND SCREEN

ABOUT

Sonic Screen Lab is a research hub at the University of the Arts London that interrogates and experiments in moving image and sound-based practices and their relationship with culture, environment and social change.

Group Members

Shreepali Patel
Lee-Jane Bennion-Nixon
David Alamouti
Fotis Begklis
Joe Jackson
David Knight
Lainy Malkani
Kim Noce
Friendred Peng
Nadine Persaud
Adam Stanovic
Ash Sharma
Kate Stonehill

Associate Members - Padlet Link

Sonic Screen Lab members are open to supervising PhD students.
Please get in touch if you’re interested in discussing this further.

NEWS

Joe Jackson and Fotis Begklis recognised at BAFTSS Awards 2025.
Joe Jackson's debut book, Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic, was awarded Runner-Up for Best First Monograph in the publication awards.
Fotis Begklis was awarded Runner-Up in the Best Screen-based Practice Research (Short) category for his documentary The ‘Strangers’ Home.

Kim Noce has been selected as one of three artists commissioned for WORK Records, the new intiative from Animate Projects, connecting artists with industrial archives to create new animation-led work.
Over the coming year, Kim will be collaborating with the John Smedley Archive Charitable Trust, delving into over 240 years of textile history through film, print, and experimental animation.

Adam Stanovic awarded funding to support an interdisciplinary collaboration with the Acoustics Department at Universidad Austral, Valdivia, Chile.
The collaboration explores themes associated with acoustic ecologies, soundscape recordings, and experimental electronic music. The project draws inspiration from Universidad Austral’s Soundlapse research, which employed a bespoke time-lapse method of recording sound to explore the urban wetlands surrounding Valdivia. In response, Adam is working with the London Wetlands Centre, composing works based on recordings made on site with a group of staff and students.

Kim Noce has taken part in Kinder Than Cuts, a powerful protest animation that premiered at the Brighton International Animation Festival 2025.
This AniJam—co-directed by Kate Jessop and Sarah Gomes Harris, and co-produced by Biscuit Platform—brings together animators from across the UK in response to the UK government’s proposed cuts to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and disability benefits.

Adam Stanovic awarded funding to support a new audio-visual installation.
The Clockwork Underpass is an audiovisual installation by Daria Baiocchi and Adam Stanovic. The installation pays tribute to the cinematic heritage of Wandsworth; it is situated in the Trinity Road Underpass, where key scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ were filmed, and it features the sound and images from various cinematic works associated with the Wandsworth area.

About the Night (2024), a short fiction film by Lee-Jane Bennion-Nixon, has been published as part of a multi-component research portfolio exploring small acts of kindness and human connection.
The film has screened internationally, earning accolades including Best Story at The British International Film Festival and nominations for Best Narrative Short at Miami Women Film Festival and Best Female Director at the European Short Awards. Accompanying the film is a critical reflection published in an edited collection on fiction filmmaking as research, co-edited by Bennion-Nixon, offering a valuable contribution to the evolving field of practice research in screen storytelling.

Kim Noce’s article Unraveling Narratives: Animated Documentary as Embodied Knowledge has been published in Tangible Territory Journal, Issue 8: Ways of Knowing.
The piece reflects on UNravel, a collaborative installation developed with the Women’s Skills Development Organization (WSDO) in Nepal.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Scripting the Past: Transgenerational Trauma and the Screenplay
Forthcoming - Dates TBC
MLG106 Cinema Room, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London
Hosted by the Sonic Screen Lab in collaboration with MA Screenwriting

Join us for an insightful event exploring how screenwriting can ethically engage with histories of trauma and systemic violence—without perpetuating harm. This special session features Dr Christopher Cocuzzi Cox, postdoctoral screenwriter and creator of History is Not the Past, in conversation with Dr Funke Oyebanjo, Senior Lecturer in Screenwriting.

PREVIOUS EVENTS

Brewing The Past: A Journey Into History Through Beer and Film
15 May 2025, Intelligence Forum, Jesus College, University of Cambridge

A journey into history through beer and film, screening and panel discussion with Prof Shreepali Patel (film director), historian Dr Susan Flavin (historian), and Mark Burton (biochemist and Brewer) and Chaired by Dr Julian Huppert.

Honest Histories? Uncovering Where Our Tasmanian Tigers Came From
19 March 2025, Museum of Zoology, University of Cambridge

New research there has uncovered an uncomfortable truth about how the history of the extinction of the thylacine had strong parallels with the violent events that took place in Tasmania in the nineteenth century. Talk with Jack Ashby (zoologist & author, University of Cambridge), Lainy Malkani (journalist & academic, University of the Arts London) and elder Uncle Hank Horton (a Pakana man from Trooloolway mob, lutruwita, Tasmania), followed by the release of podcasts: Echoes from the Museum (Jack Ashby, Lainy Malkani, Julia Schauerman & Shreepali Patel).

Link to podcasts: Echoes from the Museum

Screening Resistance: The Changing Media in Challenging Racism and Fascism
14 March 2025, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Panel discussion on the changing media landscape within the context of historical and contemporary racism and fascism with Shaminder Nahal (C4 Head of Specialist Factual), Nelson Adeosun (Producer, BAFTA & RTS award winning Uprising, with Steve McQueen & James Rogan), Dr Anamik Saha (Professor of Race & Media), Harry Shukman (undercover journalist, BAFTA nominated, Undercover: Exposing the Far Right), chaired by Lainy Malkani (journalist & academic).

From the Frontline: Fifth Year Anniversary Online Premiere
9 March 2025, online film screening, University of the Arts London

Documenting the story of healthcare workers on both sides of the Atlantic who harnessed the power of their creative voices to make sense of their world during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, a time capsule, released as part of Covid Remembrance Day, 5 years on. Professor Shreepali Patel (UAL), Dr Marques Hardin (Anglia Ruskin University) and Meghan Horvath (Brunel University).

Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic
30 January 2025, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Launching Joe Jackson’s new book, Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic: Music, Modernity, Transmedia Art (2024), by examining the works of multi-award winning director Kahlil Joseph as well as proposing the Audiovisual Atlantic as a framework for negotiating transnational movements of contemporary music videos and musical forms of digital media. A collaboration between Sonic Screen Lab, Digital Cultures and Economies Research Hub, the Screen Worlds project and SOAS’s Centre for Creative Industries, Media and Screen Studies.

The Crossing: 16 Days of Action Against Gender Based Violence
4 December 2024

Screening and discussion of The Crossing film (director, Shreepali Patel) on human trafficking to invited community leaders. This event addressed issues and raised awareness of gender-based violence with the project subsequently used and disseminated by community leaders.

Retracing Kampala: Questions of Memory - Screening and Discussion
6 November 2024, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Screening of The Riddle of Bakuli (2020) as part of the Retracing Kampala project. Discussion with the filmmakers Said Adrus and Daniel Saul, chaired by Ash Sharma on movement, displacement, persecution, memory and migration.

Experiments in Radical Publishing
1 May 2024, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

A panel discussion addressing how developments in publishing (practice-research, experimental book publishing, race and post-colonial digital, and politics of open access research) are challenging the way academic research is presented and published. Panelists include: Prof. Charlotte Crofts (UWE), Dr Janneke Adema (Coventry University), Ash Sharma (darkmatters) and Chaired by Dr Mark Peter-Wright (LCC).

CONTACT

sonicscreenlab@lcc.arts.ac.uk

SONIC SCREEN LAB
Screen School
London College of Communication
University of the Arts London