Projects
Becoming
Becoming
Becoming: an interactive experience exploring matrescence, the profound transformation of motherhood.
Becoming is a collaborative interactive immersive artwork exploring the profound transformation of motherhood. Informed by qualitative research with mothers of all ages, from early parenthood to grandmothers, the work reflects the diversity and complexity of the maternal experience, where themes of isolation and loneliness sit alongside moments of resilience, joy, frustration and love.
Expand
£50,000
“I’m really excited and honoured to be awarded the Expand Fund. Building on the prototype developed through the Experiment Fund last year, this support will allow me and the team to keep growing Becoming into a public-facing experience, showcasing at Belfast International Arts Festival 2026.”
Aims of the Project
Using open-back headphones, spatial sound, haptic objects and moving image, Becoming invites audiences into an intimate yet porous listening environment. Participants encounter personal experiences of matrescence through spoken-word testimony, spatial sound and vibration, experienced as both private and shared. As they move closer to one another, new voices emerge through the headphones, shifting the experience from solitude towards connection and shared presence. At the centre of the space, a steel bath fitted with tactile transducers vibrates, sending toys rattling across its surface, inviting people to approach, touch and feel the vibrations. This sensory approach has grown from research into the difficulty of putting maternal experience fully into words.
Originally developed as a prototype through the Immersive Arts UK Experiment strand in 2025, Becoming is now being expanded into a public-facing artwork, building on prototype development and play-test learning. Sound sits at the core of the work through a hybrid listening system, spatial audio composition and haptic sound objects, with accessibility embedded into the design from the outset.
The project is being developed in partnership with NI Science Festival, Belfast International Arts Festival, Digital Catapult, the Sonic Arts Research Centre, and QUB Media Lab. Together, these partners are supporting audience development, technical development, iterative testing, public presentation and touring exploration as the work evolves.
Meet the artists
Helena Hamilton
Lead artist
she/her
I am an artist working at the intersections of visual art, sound, and digital interaction.Their practice explores dynamic relationships between sound, image, and site, bridging the digital and physical to create experiences that evoke meaning rather than impose it.
At its core is a quiet yet deliberate politics—a fascination with the overlooked: the hum of fluorescent tubes, the crease of crumpled paper, or the repetitive sound of their child’s toy. Grounded in observation and investigation, their work draws from everyday life to create open-ended encounters that invite reflection on the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Janie Doherty
Choreographer
Janie Doherty is a dancer, choreographer, artist, mother and doula. Recent projects include ‘Mother Tongue’ at the MAC, Belfast (26 April – 21 July 2024), ‘The Night Draws Near’ at the Ulster Museum, Belfast (August 2023), ‘Politics of Comfort’ at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Derry (2019).Janie Doherty is a movement based artist, massage therapist, performer mother and doula. After graduating with a first class honors in dance, Janie has been working in Northern Ireland as a community facilitator and performer. Janie is interested in helping people connect to an embodied state of being through movement, story-telling and performance. She has over 15 years experience working in the community as a dance artist and is currently collaborating with womens centres to support new mothers by reflecting on our lived experience in an embodied and artistic way.
Aisling McGeown
Filmmaker
Aisling is a filmmaker with over 10 years of experience in media and broadcasting. Aside from making films for broadcast and online over the years her career has also been focused around community filmmaking. She has worked closely with youth to give voice to complex social and community issues, including teenage motherhood. This work has combines lived experience with in-depth research and consultation with her paticipants to create deeply personal and authentic stories that have received various cinematic nominations. Creatively and technically driven Aisling is committed to storytelling that fosters meaningful dialogue and understanding. Alongside filmmaking , she is a poet writing in both English and Irish, with poems reflecting on motherhood and life in Belfast published in multiple community pamphlets.
Dr. Isaac Gibson
Music Producer + Technologist
he/him
Isaac is a composer and researcher with a PhD from the Sonic Arts Research Centre, QUB. He has worked extensively on sound for theatre and brings expertise in music production and interactive technologies. In Becoming, he supports the integration of sound and technology, helping shape the project’s sonic and interactive environment.
Dr. Michael McKnight
Hybrid Listening + Interactive Audio
he/him
Michael McKnight is Programme Director for Screen Production at Ulster University and a Co-Investigator at the CoSTAR Screen Lab, based in Studio Ulster. For Becoming, we are working with Michael to develop and integrate a framework for shared immersive listening experiences developed through his PhD (at Sonic Arts Research Centre, QUB), in which multiple tracked listeners have agency within spatial compositions.
