Opening Hours
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: 10am-6pm
Wednesday: 10am-6pm
Thursday: 10am-6pm
Friday: 10am-6pm
Saturday: 10am-6pm
Sunday: Closed
Close Encounter is a new audio-visual installation by Merijn Royaards, created in collaboration with Martin Roth. Through the integration of spatial and tactile sound design with enveloping visuals, the work explores how distance is perceived differently across sound, touch, and vision—and how these sensory variations shape our experience of space.
Employing high-resolution LiDAR scanning alongside advanced sound recording technologies, the project captures, deconstructs, and reconstructs the exceptional Grade I–listed studio at Ladbroke Hall. Sonic, vibrational, and visual elements are transformed and reconfigured into an evolving audio-visual environment that invites visitors to experience shifting perceptions of proximity, scale, and intimacy. By reworking the building’s inherent resonances, Close Encounter examines how spatial perception can be reimagined, ultimately altering how space is felt and understood.
Dr Merijn Royaards is an artist and researcher exploring the relationships between spatial experience, memory, and technological mediation, with a focus on spaces of conflict and hypersensory environments. Working across architecture, performance, music, and audio-visual art, his practice spans interactive installations, live performance, film, and radio. He is a Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he leads Situated Audio and contributes to the Situated Practice MA and Design for Performance and Interaction MA.
Martin Roth (Autogen Endress) generates hyperreal acoustic experiences in order to teleport the listener to parallel points in space and time; “Travelling without moving.” [Atreides] He is particularly influenced by 90s-era ambient music; media technology demonstrators, and interactive media. Primary motivations include projecting the human experience into the digital realm, exploring what is lost and what is to be gained and who really cares anyway. He combines a traditional education in electrical engineering, signal processing, and telecommunications with strong autodidactic tendencies and artistic sensibilities, “One man’s magic is another man’s engineering.”
