Event Details
FREE
Sound Scene is the Washington, DC, region’s premier interactive sound and multisensory arts festival. It’s a free all-ages celebration of sonic and sensory arts featuring artists from both DC and around the world. ASL will be provided for events on May 2 and May 3.
General registration is recommended.
ONGOING PROJECTS
Face Value: Not Our Parents’ Mirror—Kameshia M. Hunter
Face Value: Not Our Parents’ Mirror is an immersive sound installation exploring the beauty rules that many Black and Brown women were taught to carry—and what it means to decide for yourself what you keep. Through touch, voice, and reflection, visitors move through inherited expectations as the body speaks, the mirror responds, and the final decision belongs to them. This work is part memory, part interruption, and part release. About the artist: sincerelymeeshproduction.com
Resource/Interplay—Matthew Maker
Resource/Interplay is an experiential work (auditory, tactile, visual, and participatory) that expresses the beauty of simple yet chaotic processes found in cold climates. The art invites audiences to intimately experience physical systems of melt and flow, gravity, light, and reflection. These abstractions distantly mirror ordinary experience, reminding us that even mud puddles have a complex and subtle beauty, and reminding us of the vast wonder of everyday life: a world and a climate to cherish as sacred. About the artist: mattarts.org
WORKSHOPS
Please register for our free workshops (links in the entries below). Space is limited.
Tactile Sound Sculpture Workshop—Dan Ortiz Leizman
Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3, at 10:30 AM, 11:30 AM, and 1:30 PM
Register here: etix.com/ticket/e/1057998/
Build your own sound sculpture with the DMV’s very own Dan Ortiz Leizman. Join a free 40-minute workshop in which participants of all ages will become contemporary sculptors. Using cardboard along with mini transducers, Ortiz Leizman will guide participants to position contact mics to capture voices and movement. Sound will be mirrored back as vibration, creating an accessible, hands-on exploration of embodied sound.
*Registration capped at 10 people per session.
*Children under 8 should be accompanied by an adult.
Immersive Sound Walk: Inaudible Cities: Here, Now, There, and Then—Jacek Tadeusz Smolicki
Sunday, May 3, at 11:30 AM, 1:30 PM, and 3:30 PM
Register here: etix.com/ticket/e/1058087/
This free guided soundwalk will turn ordinary city infrastructure into the four classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire. Equipped with special audio receivers, participants will follow an itinerary that is both carefully designed and open to spontaneous encounters. Water fountains, switchboards, ventilation shafts, sewers, and cobblestones will be processed in real time and transformed into sonic mirrors of the elements, their sounds gradually weaving into a composition that opens portals to fragile environments documented by Smolicki during their fieldwork in the Pacific West Coast, the Arctic Circle, the Canaveral Seashore, and other vulnerable landscapes.
*Duration: 35–40 minutes
*All ages welcome, Children under 12 require adult supervision and must be registered separately (to ensure there is enough equipment available for all).
PERFORMANCES
Reflections on Machaut: An Immersion by the DMV Regenerate! Orchestra—J. Clay Gonzalez, Wesley Hornpetrie, and the Regenerate! Orchestra
Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3, at 11 AM on the Plaza (outdoor stage)
The Regenerate! Orchestra will present an immersive reimagining of Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut. A 30-person orchestra will perform the first movement (“Kyrie”) as an antiphonal drone composition with found percussion elements. The alien, mesmerizing harmonies of the 14th-century ars nova style will smear out and spatialize, allowing the audience to physically inhabit and linger within a lost and beautiful musical language. About the artists: claygonzalez.com, wesleyhornpetrie.com
Duality—Wendel Patrick
Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3, at noon on the Plaza (outdoor stage)
Wendel Patrick’s performance is an exploration of the relationship between himself and his twin brother, who did not survive birth, through manipulated sound, recorded spoken text, and auditory expression. Born Kevin Gift, Patrick uses the first and middle name of his twin brother, Wendel Patrick, in artistic performance. About the artist: wendelpatrick.com
Find the full schedule: hirshhorn.si.edu/event/sound-scene-2026-distant-mirror/