Nikki Sheth is an internationally recognised sound artist and composer. Her practice involves field recording, soundscape composition, multimedia installations, sound mapping and soundwalking. Her work uses multichannel and ambisonic spatial practices to create immersive listening experiences and engage with audiences. She uses sound as a medium to bring a voice to the environment and encourage a wider awareness of the natural world.
Nikki completed a PhD in Musical Composition at The University of Birmingham titled ‘Blurring the Lines Between Field Recording, Soundscape Composition and Acousmatic Music’ in 2021. The practice-led research project investigated the relationship between field recordings and the genres of pure field recording composition, soundscape composition and acousmatic composition in her own practice and reflected upon how this relates to practitioners in the field, acquired through a series of interviews. Participants included Leah Barclay, Jonty Harrison, Francisco López, Brona Martin, Claude Schryer, Chris Watson and Hildegard Westerkamp.
She has extensive field recording experience, using specialist equipment (including multichannel audio and ambisonics) having been on various field recording residencies in the past. In 2016, she worked alongside Chris Watson and Jez riley French on a field recording workshop to Orford Ness, in 2017 she went on a field recording residency to Mmabolela, South Africa with Francisco Lopez and in 2018 she attended an Experimental Composition and Performance residency in the Pyrenees with Eli Keszler. In 2019, she was an artist in residence at the Vanha Paukka Cultural Centre in Finland, where she spent two weeks field recording in remote locations across Finland and in 2023 she went to the Azores on a field recording trip.
She has received international recognition for the quality of her field recordings and soundscape compositions. In 2020 she was awarded a Sound and Music award and nominated for the Phonurgia Nova Awards in the ‘Field Recording: Soundscape’ category. In 2021 she was an Honourable Mention for the Sound of the Year Awards in the ‘Composed with Sound’ category and nominated for an Ivor Novello Composer Award in the Sound Art Category. In 2022 she received a Sound and Music New Voices Seed Award and in 2023 she was selected as a Sound UK Sound Generator artist. Her debut album 'Sounds of Mmabolela' received an excellent review in The Wire Magazine and she was part of the compilation album 'Disruptive Frequencies' released with Nonclassical in 2023 which has had international press and plays.
Her work has been presented internationally including at BEAST FEAST (UK), Sonic Territories (Germany), Pitea Performing Arts Biennial (Sweden), KMH (Stockholm), MANTIS (UK), Spektra Festival (Columbia), Ecoacoustic Congress (Brisbane), Barber Institute of Fine Arts (UK), The Global Composition (Germany), DLR Lexicon (Dublin), Perspectives on Listening (Brisbane), Balance Unbalance (UK), Sound + Environment (UK), Sound Thought (Glasgow) and more. She has been featured on Framework Radio, Clydebuilt Radio, Resonance FM and BBC Radio 3 and her work has been published with a variety of labels. Recent commissions include Ambient Soundscapes (live set), Sound Explorers (global soundmap), Connections Through Culture, UK - South East Asia (British Council funded project), We’re All Bats (Binaural Soundscapes series), Land Lines (soundscape composition), Ten Acres of Sound (sound walk) and Artefact Projects (multimedia installation).
She taught the Studio Composition module at The University of Birmingham between 2018 and 2022, has been teaching at Anglia Ruskin since 2021 and teaches a short course in field recording and soundscape composition at UCL with Open City Docs. Nikki freelances as a Guest Lecturer and private teacher and is a member of sound collective SOUNDkitchen. She is currently an Associate at Open School East, a free, independent art school and community space that focuses on collective learning.
"The formal debut from this Birmingham, UK artist captures and cajoles aural corings from the South African wilderness — bugs, birds, larger mammals, nature’s sundry sighs. Superficial spins, blessedly, permit one to tour without a travel visa, a sun visor, or repellant-infused SPF-50, awash in weather patterns and ecosystem flirts. Yet Sounds Of Mmabolela truly comes to life when it artificially snaps into focus. The edges of animal sounds are ground together like flints in service of subtle sparks. This happens when you aren't quite listening closely enough. As “Paddabolela” concludes with chirps and cries massing in a waveform tempest, the outdoors ambience marvellously initiates a tangled staccato on “Limpopo”. - Review in The Wire Magazine, January 2021, Issue 443
When there is true calm, as on Nikki Sheth’s composition ‘Pemberton Gardens’, field recordings of bird calls are later punctuated by animalistic shrieks. That is indicative of its aim to conjure discordant tones to channel anger and express a desire to reshape power structures, railing against the violence of institutional whiteness. – Electronic Sound Magazine
Nikki Sheth’s gorgeously trippy manipulations of field recordings (the enchanting “Sandwell Valley” and “Pemberton Gardens”) bring an additional environmental perspective to that resistance that sits perfectly next to Dhangsha’s dirty and dubby exploration of both his own past and a lost lineage of Black techno and Black noise. – The Wire Magazine
In complete contract, the two pieces presented by Nikki Sheth, developed from field recordings, both conveyed a very real sense of place. The splashing water, manipulated honking geese and flapping wings of Sandwell Valley worked in harmony to effectively construct an impressionist landscape with sounds ... as did the often beautiful collage of subtly edited bird calls which comprised Pemberton Gardens. – Sound and Silence
