Barbican’s new multi-sensory exhibition redefines how we feel the sound

This summer, the Barbican Centre in London introduces Feel the Sound, a bold new multi-sensory exhibition that reimagines our relationship to music and vibration. Running from May 22nd to August 31st, 2025, the project takes over unexpected parts of the city—from the raw edges of underground car parks to the open-air expanse of the Lakeside Terrace—turning architecture into a living, listening body.

As part of the Barbican’s Frequencies season, the multi-sensory exhibition brings together 11 ambitious installations where sound is not only heard, but felt, seen, and even co-created. Highlights include Observatory Station by Miyu Hosoi, which fuses global field recordings with ambient textures from within the Barbican, evoking imagined lives and distant places. In UN/BOUND, created by the Trans Voices choir in collaboration with spatial sound studio Monom and scholar Patty Ayukawa, the public is invited to add their voices to a choral composition exploring identity through resonance. Your Inner Symphony by Kinda Studios and Nexus Studios uses real-time neuroscience to turn biometric responses into an immersive display of sound and light.

Outside the Barbican Centre, poet Raymond Antrobus presents Heightened Lyric, a series of poetry-bearing kites fluttering in silence—an ode to the world of non-hearing. Meanwhile, the venue’s underground garage is transformed into Joyride, a nostalgic love letter to Y2K rave culture and its DIY car sound systems.

Curated by Luke Kemp, Head of Barbican Immersive, and co-produced with Tokyo’s Museum of Narratives, the multi-sensory exhibition Feel the Sound will travel internationally after its London debut. “We are, at our core, sonic beings,” Kemp says. “This show reminds us of that truth—through the skin, the eyes, and the imagination.”