Listening to Light: Chris Ruffoni on Solarphones, Deep Listening and Environmental Sound
Listen to the solarphones here
Chris Ruffoni is a composer, sound artist and educator whose practice explores listening, environmental processes and the relationship between sound, place and attention. Drawing on influences ranging from experimental music and Pauline Oliveros's concept of Deep Listening to direct experiences of landscape, Ruffoni creates installations that respond to changing environmental conditions.
Central to his recent practice is the ongoing Solarphones project, a series of delicate sound installations powered directly by sunlight. Using solar panels, simple electronic systems and acoustic elements, the works generate ever-changing soundscapes shaped by light levels, weather conditions and natural variation. Rather than composing fixed musical structures, Ruffoni creates systems that allow environmental forces to become active participants in the production of sound. The resulting works invite audiences to slow down, listen closely and become more aware of the subtle rhythms and processes of the more-than-human world.
In this conversation, Chris discusses the origins of these ideas, the influence of experimental music, and the ways in which listening can deepen our relationship with landscape and environmental change.
BZ: One of the things I wanted to ask you about was your actual process, particularly with the sound pieces, and how you came to them. You mentioned that many of these ideas developed during lockdown. How did it all actually begin?
CR: It really started during my Master's by Research. As a composer, I was looking at how listening affects the way modern composers think about writing music. This idea of being an active listener really chimed with me and helped make sense of a lot of the music I enjoyed playing and listening to.
At the time, I was part of the Edges Ensemble at the University of Huddersfield. For a while we went through a phase of playing incredibly quiet music, right on the edge of audibility. In that kind of music, silence becomes just as important, if not more important, than sound itself. It wasn't music that tried to pull you through a narrative. It simply existed, and you, as a listener, had to decide how to engage with it.
That became incredibly important to me. At the same time, I was developing a greater appreciation for being outdoors. Moving to Marsden had a huge impact. The moors were completely spellbinding. I started taking this idea of listening into the outside world, recording environmental sounds and recognising similarities between listening to a stream and listening to the kinds of music we were performing and writing.
During my Master's I was also interested in creating systems where the music could effectively write itself. You start the ball rolling, but you're no longer in control of where it goes. You might set up conditions or structures, but the outcome develops independently. These ideas come from the tradition of process-based experimental music. Steve Reich is probably one of the best-known examples. The listening side of things was also heavily influenced by Pauline Oliveros and her work around Deep Listening.
I became increasingly interested in physical systems and acoustic instruments. Many of the instruments I was working with had a built-in fragility. You couldn't recreate exactly the same action twice, which meant variation was always present. I liked the idea of things happening in real space rather than being recorded and manipulated on a computer.
Those ideas stayed with me. I was still looking for ways to set processes in motion and let them unfold. At the same time, I was spending more time outdoors, walking and listening. I was always searching for a way to bring music and nature together.
The moment that really sparked the first installation was surprisingly simple. I had one of those solar-powered toy crabs from Whitby, where the claws move faster or slower depending on the sunlight. I was washing up one day and thought, what if I put tiny cymbals in the crab's claws? If I had lots of them, they'd all be moving at slightly different speeds depending on the available light. I realised that was essentially how I wanted to make music.
BZ: Finn had one of those solar-powered crickets. When the sun came out it would vibrate across the floor.
CR: Exactly. I should probably make one of those at some point. It's actually quite interesting because real crickets alter their chirp depending on temperature. You can analyse the frequency of their chirps and reliably estimate the temperature.
I suppose I'm trying to do something similar. The sun becomes the input that creates variation. It controls the speed of the system. I did try putting cymbals on the crab, but the motor couldn't carry the weight. By then solar panels had become much cheaper and I could buy small motors. Once I started experimenting with those, it felt magical. You could see the direct relationship between sunlight and movement, the motors speeding up and slowing down as clouds passed overhead. From there, I just kept developing the idea.
BZ: Following on from that, I wanted to ask about the relationship between the artworks and the environment. Do you think of the environment as a collaborator in the work?
CR: That's a really interesting question. Nobody had asked me that before, and I don't think I'd ever considered it in those terms.
I don't necessarily think of the environment as a collaborator. It's more that I'm trying to create something that behaves like a natural process. Ideally, the installations are something you almost stumble across rather than something that announces itself.
With the Solarphones, for example, there are no batteries or capacitors. They're powered directly by available sunlight. By placing them somewhere that doesn't receive constant sun, there may be periods when the installation makes no sound at all. That's an important part of the work.
The wind also affects the notes being played. It feels closer to those experiences we have in nature where you can't demand that something happens. If you're hoping to see a particular bird, plant or animal, you have to be present and attentive, but you can't control the encounter.
The system itself is very simple. It creates sequences of notes influenced by sunlight, wind and other environmental factors. Nature often feels like that to me. It appears chaotic, but there are underlying patterns and structures.
There's something about seeing or hearing repeated actions with small variations that I find endlessly compelling. We talked earlier about watching grass moving in the breeze. You can sit and watch that movement for hours. Or ripples moving across water. I think these experiences connect to something very deep and fundamentally human.
BZ: Do you see your work as encouraging a particular mode of listening? Do you think it encourages a tuning into the more-than-human world?
CR: I really hope so. Whether that always happens is another question.
With the recordings, especially those made on Marsden Moor during lockdown, you hear birdsong, water, sheep and all the sounds that define a place. I think listeners become aware of the environment where those sounds were captured.
With the installations, I hope they encourage people to slow down. To listen first to the instruments and then to everything else around them. But context matters. Sometimes they're shown indoors or in busy exhibition spaces, where they can become more of a novelty.
The ideal situation is often outdoors. Apart from the occasions when I've installed them unofficially on the moors, it's actually quite rare to exhibit them in the context they were designed for.
BZ: I also wanted to ask about embodied and sensory listening. About being physically present with the resonance and vibration of the work.
CR: There's another installation that responds to light in a slightly different way. We designed a circuit that produces a sound, then stops, then sounds again. Each instrument behaves independently. As the light fades, the silences between sounds become longer and longer.
Initially I was interested in how sunlight could influence the timing. But it wasn't until I sat with the work during a sunset that I really understood what it was about.
I watched the light gradually change and listened as the silences grew longer. It happened incredibly slowly over a couple of hours. Eventually the silences became more significant than the sounds themselves.
It's difficult to describe. It feels as though something is happening to you. You're becoming aware of the passage of time, the changing light and your own presence within that moment. The sound and the landscape become inseparable.
You can't really capture that experience in a recording. In fact, despite the work being several years old, I've never had the opportunity to exhibit it in the way it was intended. I'm still the only person who has experienced it under those conditions.
Throughout the conversation, Ruffoni repeatedly returns to the idea of listening as a form of attention rather than a passive act. His installations do not seek to dominate space or direct an audience towards a fixed interpretation. Instead, they create conditions in which environmental processes, chance and human perception intersect. By allowing sunlight, wind and changing weather to shape the work, Ruffoni's practice invites a slower and more attentive engagement with the world around us. In an era increasingly characterised by distraction and environmental uncertainty, his work offers a gentle but powerful reminder that listening can itself be an act of connection.
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