Self Unsame Again Always New: Interview with Sam Dunscombe by Maud Seuntjens
How do we weave philosophy, physics, and sound – and how does this respond to nature and the body? Clarinettist and recording engineer Sam Dunscombe explores these questions with Maud Seuntjens.
One of the cornerstones of the Sonic Acts Biennial, Melted for Love is the Listening Room, where soundworks are presented on an octophonic surround soundsystem. Housed in the beautiful glass pavilion of Zone2Source in Amstelpark, it invites visitors to listen with their whole bodies – to engage with the immersive, relational, and ecological qualities of spatial sound. Many new artworks will premiere here, most by artists who have taken part in Sonic Acts’ Spatial Sound Residency. Another highlight of the Biennial are the Spatial Sound Concerts – two nights of live performances diffused through the world-famous Acousmonium. Hosted in Paradiso, this orchestra of loudspeakers will envelop listeners with new sound works, including pieces co-commissioned with the Musical Research Group of the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA GRM) in Paris. Participating in both events, Sam Dunscombe sat down with curator Maud Seuntjens to discuss her artistic and theoretical practice. The interview is an exclusive, first-time preview from the forthcoming Biennial reader, which launches at the end of January.
Sam Dunscombe moves between experimental music, audio engineering, and spectralism. Fascinated by the bodily experience of time through the perception of sound within space, her research into augmented realities in listening leads into the depths of sound synthesis, just intonation, and live electronic performance with the clarinet. Leaning into the work of Romanian-French spectralist Horațiu Rădulescu, Pythagorean science, Alvin Lucier, and La Monte Young, Dunscombe has developed tuning systems based on the complex relationships between sounds, often recorded in the forests and deserts of Southern California. Through a self-developed ‘mass plasma synthesis’ technique, boiling masses of energy mutate infinitely in space before collapsing into single points, only to re-emerge into another, altered loop.
At the Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 Dunscombe presents two newly commissioned multichannel works: a sound composition exhibited in the Listening Room at Zone2Source, and a live performance for the INA GRM’s Acousmonium at Paradiso. Maud Seuntjens, a member of Sonic Acts’ curatorial team, spoke to her about the politics of de-tuning into multiplicity, the presence of space, the poetics of beauty, and how sound can make us sense the fullness of time.
Maud Seuntjens: How did you come into music?
Sam Dunscombe: I started playing clarinet as a kid and I felt a deep connection to it. I discovered experimental music at university and quickly realised that a lot of musicians had rather expensive equipment. I bought the cheapest laptop, figuring that if I learned how to programme, first in Pure Data, later in Max/MSP, I should have the freedom to make any sound I could imagine.
