Haroon Mirza: Creating a sculpture with light, sound and video
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following his time at Cern, Haroon Mirza has been creating a major installation based on his research there. The piece, made with his collaborator Jack Jelfs, is a sculptural art work which uses a circle of eight speakers, a large screen and an octagonal chandelier sculpture of LEDs to compose light, sound and video. Combined with a careful manipulation of spatial acoustics, the viewer is cocooned in a truly immersive experience. Oonagh Cousins joins Haroon in his studio as he and Jack work on the installation, to discover the creative processes behind his art. What are the technical challenges in creating this kind of piece, which has to be reassembled in different spaces? And will the final installation and rehearsals go according to plan? This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from In the Studio, exploring the processes of the world’s most creative people.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:10.3 | In this edition, we'll take you back to 2019. |
| 0:17.9 | On a large screen, a woman speaks. |
| 0:21.7 | At times, her image becomes ghostly and distorted. |
| 0:25.9 | Disjointed subtitles appear, pulses of sound vibrate around you, and lights flash. |
| 0:33.1 | Welcome to the work of Harun Mirza. |
| 0:36.3 | It's not like you're observing the work, you know, like in the classical sense of a painting or a sculpture. |
| 0:41.3 | You know, you're standing at one point, the painting is in front of you and there's this sort of separation. |
| 0:47.3 | It's more like you're immersed in the work. |
| 0:51.3 | You hear it, you see it, you feel the vibrations. It's multi-sensorial. |
| 0:56.0 | I'm Una Cousins and this is the programme that follows the world's leading creative artists |
| 1:01.3 | to find out how they work and think. |
| 1:05.6 | It is a bright, beautiful early morning in Easton and i'm cycling along the river lee the river |
| 1:16.8 | lee runs down the east side of london from north to south headed for the river thames and it also runs |
| 1:25.0 | between my house and harun Merza's studio. |
| 1:29.7 | Hello Harun, how are you? |
| 1:31.8 | A bad moment. |
| 1:33.1 | Sorry, just not, I mean, it's a fine moment, but there's too many things scheduled at the same time. |
| 1:39.3 | The British sound and installation artist Harun Merza has a lot on. |
| 1:44.8 | He's been nominated for several international awards and he exhibits around the world. |
| 1:50.4 | In the month when I first meet him, Harun has two exhibitions launching at the same time. |
... |
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