What’s Eating Our Reality
Set in an imagined future What’s Eating Our Reality is a three course meal with a difference. This intimate show explores the journey your food has taken from seed to field to table illuminating issues of food justice. Host Maya Chowdhry orchestrates the ritual of dining and uses media art to gently immerse the audience in a new reality, one in which the food they love may be in short supply. →
Galvanising Change
Galvanising Change is an experiential audio Installation examining climate change, for one audience member at a time. It uses a wearable sensor to measure their galvanic skin responses whilst they are listening to climate justice stories – which are triggered according to the audience’s emotions. →
Waves
For this interactive sound Installation I wanted to make visible the transformation of Salfords waterways, particularly in relation to climate change. I took as a starting point the paintings hung in the Victorian Gallery at the museum that featured these waterways, and then made a series of field recordings, and imagined soundscapes, in the specific locations, for example Blackfrairs Bridge. →
Maya Chowdhry
I am a multidisciplinary artist, I create immersive and democratic experiences for audiences/participants, leaning into my past work in radio, audiowalks and live art. My practice interrogates themes such as world water scarcity, food sovereignty, and climate justice. I am currently exploring biodata sonification; turning brainwaves into melodies and plant waves into soundwaves – seeking to find a shared language between the human and the more-than-human. →
Soil voicemails and other trans-species calls
This digital poetry piece was commissioned for the ‘Crossed Lines’ project in collaboration with the Science Museum Group project explores trans-species calling: insects leaving ‘voicemail’ messages in the soil for other insects; humans creating computer-generated whistles to telephone dolphins; and the parallel of telephone-tapping to eavesdropping by túngara frogs. →
Fathoming Fungal Frequencies
This interactive sound experience seeks to uncover the possible existence of a shared language between human and fungi – giving a voice and making visible the mycelium network. By utilising interactive biodata sonification, which requires this inter-being collaboration, the piece hopes to connect human to more-than-human.
The research aims to contribute to the area of Eco Sound Design; producing an exhibit that aims to connect humans to nature to engender care for the earth in these times of planetary crisis. →
Tales from the Towpath
An immersive literature work for Manchester Literature Festival 2014. This transmedia work features a location based storytrail, micro-projection, origami narrowboat and a live performance on a traditional narrowboat.
Explore hidden, lost and imagined lives of Manchester with a story that runs across rivers Irwell and Medlock, the Rochdale and Bridgewater canals, linking them to iconic Manchester venues such as The Royal Exchange. →
Ethical People Movement
Transmedia story produced as part of ‘Continent Chop Chop’ by Virtual Migrants, a story told through poetry, music and digital-media connecting legacies of inequality to climate change.
Using invisible theatre, and conveying the story of Ethical People Movement across web, twitter, YouTube and Bandcamp, this story explores ‘white-saviour complex’ and asks the audience to look beyond the issues of climate justice, refugees and austerity into their complex connectivity. →
Hayling Island | stories at sea level
A digital short story collection, in collaboration with writer Michelle Green, sound designer Caro C and literary geographer Dr David Cooper. Refugees, tourists, circus acts, smugglers, a destitute Russian princess and escapees from the industrial mainland: Hayling Island’s many sea-level lives are exposed through a digital story map and a series of spoken word events. →
Residencies and Workshops
I have worked as a writer and artist with a range of organisations such as B Arts, Northern Ballet Theatre, Lets Go, The Arvon Foundation and Contact (young people’s theatre) and with a range of participants, from those with little experience of the arts and creative writing, to those aspiring to become writers and artists. My projects and residencies include a diverse range of groups, including women’s groups, Asian and youth groups. →