About

James Bulley (b.1984) is an internationally acclaimed artist, composer and sound designer based in London, United Kingdom. 

His award-winning practice operates across areas including contemporary and electronic music, installation art, public art, immersive sound, exhibition sound design, curation, and film soundtrack.

Artworks and Compositions

Artworks and compositions include: The Mother Goose Series, a series of five sound box constructions featuring the Royal Northern Sinfonia (Glasshouse International Centre of Music, UK, 2025); Still the Hours (with Claire Doherty), a promenade spatial sound work (Hampton Court Palace, London, UK, 2025); Maelstrom (as Jones/Bulley), a 96-channel spatial gallery work composed in real-time from autonomous user-generated networked sound (Science Gallery, Melbourne, AU, 2022); Living Symphonies (as Jones/Bulley), an ecologically composed forest sound installation (Compton Verney, UK, 2023); Dawns, a composition for five remote players at dawn, with the artist group non zero one and the National Trust (premiered across the UK, May 2020); Other Rooms, Other Voices, a point-cloud portrait with ambisonic sound (London Borough of Culture, 2022); Daphne Oram’s Still Point with Shiva Feshareki and the London Contemporary Orchestra (world premiere performance at the BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, UK, July 2018); Tactus, a touch–sound landscape (Kaunas Biennial, LT, 2015); and Variable 4 (as Jones/Bulley), an outdoor spatial sound installation driven by real-time weather conditions (Aldeburgh Music / Snape Maltings, UK, 2011).

Installation, Exhibition Sound, Public Art and Theatre

Work for immersive art installation includes: Of the Oak (with Marshmallow Laser Feast), an outdoor film-sound artwork exploring the Lucombe Oak Tree (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, 2025);  Poetics of Soil (with Marshmallow Laser Feast and Merlin Sheldrake), a spatial film-sound artwork exploring the Amanita Muscaria mushroom (Soil at Somerset House, UK, 2025); Evolver (with Marshmallow Laser Feast and Cate Blanchett), a Virtual Reality experience with spatial sound exhibition exploring the trajectory of breath within the human body (Cannes Film Festival Immersive, FR, 2024); City of Trees (with Matthew Rosier), an exploration of Epping Forest’s ancient relationship with humans and London (City of London, UK, 2021); and Distortions in Spacetime (with Marshmallow Laser Feast), an exploration into the formation of black holes (NXT Museum, Amsterdam, NL, 2022).

Exhibition sound design includes: New York, 2050: A Possible Future (with Superflux and Ingka group), a spatial exploration of New York as a net zero city (New York, US, 2023–2024); Ephesus Experience Museum (İzmir, TR, 2023–); The Indian Army at the Palace (Hampton Court, UK, 2024–); The Heal Institute (Museum of the Future, UAE, 2022–); George III: The Mind behind the Myth (Kew Palace, UK, 2021–2023); A Home Away from Home: The India Club (National Trust, London, UK, 2019); and The Great Hall and Kitchens with Chomko and Rosier (Hampton Court Palace, UK, 2020–).

Music and sound design for public art includes: World Kiosk (as Variable Matter), an immersive street kiosk (Greenwich, UK, 2024); And There Was Brian (with G Atkins), an audio monument to peace campaigner Brian Haw (Parliament Square, London UK, 2018–); The Rising Sun (as Variable Matter), a spatial light-sound installation (Romford, UK, 2022); Pontefract Giants (with Matthew Rosier), an outdoor film-sound exploration of deep-time (Pontefract Castle, UK, 2021); and The Weather Machine (with David Shearing), a scenographic installation composed by atmospheric conditions (Stage, Leeds, UK, 2015).

Sound design and score for theatre includes: New Beginning (with Variable Matter), an ecological exploration of the climate crisis (Grand Theatre Luxembourg, LU, 2025); Black Rock (with David Shearing), an exploration into the nature of climbing (Stage, Leeds, UK, 2017); you’ll see me sailing in antarctica (with non zero one), a work exploring memory and how we manufacture it (National Theatre, UK, 2012); mountaineering (with non zero one), an exploration of choice, interaction and personal conversation (Roundhouse, UK, 2015); and this is where we got to when we came in (with non zero one), an adieu to the Bush Theatre (Bush Theatre, UK, 2011).

Film Sound Design and Score

Music and sound design for film includes: Beneath a Mother’s Feet directed by Elias Suhail (2023), a short film exploring the life of a single mother in Morocco; Maria directed by Nina Danino (2023), an artist film exploring the life of Maria Callas; A Thousand Fires directed by Saeed Taji Farouky (2021), a tale of family, fate, and life-cycles in Myanmar's hand-drilled oil fields; Ayouni by director Yasmin Fedda (2020), a documentary exploring two high-profile figures who disappeared in the Syrian revolution; Maya directed by Anson Hartford and Jamshid Mojadadi (2020), the true life story of an Iranian zoo keeper and his Bengal tiger; Turn of the Screw, a virtual landscape film created with Opera North and Lusion (2020); Island by director Steven Eastwood (2017), a documentary exploring end-of-life at a hospice on the Isle of Wight; Ness directed by Adam Scovell (2019) with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood, and E-LIFE directed by Edward Scott-Clarke (2018), an exploration of the devastating global impact of electronic waste across the globe.

Curation

Curatorial projects include: co-curation of Lily Greenham: An Art of Living, a multi-room retrospective exhibition and symposium surrounding the work and life of artist and musician Lily Greenham (Badischer Kunstevrein, Karlsruhe, DE, 2024); An Individual Note, a touring concert programme of works by composer Daphne Oram (Auditorium Ansermet, Geneva, CH 2025); co-curation of Observations on Being (with Marshmallow Laser Feast), a multi-piece site-specific outdoor exhibition at Coventry City of Culture (Coventry, UK 2021); co-curation (with Helen Frosi) of the multi-performer 12-hour event Longplayer Day (venues across London, UK Summer Solstice, 2017 and 2019); and the creation of the open-access archival project Contact Journal: A Journal of Contemporary Music 1971-1990.

Research and Academia

Alongside his art practice, Bulley is an active researcher and lecturer, currently based as a Research Associate at Goldsmiths, University of London where he also teaches as an associate lecturer and recently co-led the REF2021 Impact Case Study: Transforming institutional and public understanding of the history of electronic music through the Daphne Oram archive.

In 2021, Bulley published two reports (with Dr Özden Şahin) What is practice research? and How can practice research be shared? following a three-year post-doctorate with PRAG-UK and Research England. In 2018 he co-edited a special issue of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac on curation in sound art, which followed from the Sound Art Curating conference he co-directed at Goldsmiths, University of London (2014). In 2018 Bulley completed a doctorate in Music at Goldsmiths, and was an active member of the Unit for Sound Practice Research in the Department of Music (2018-2021). In recent years he has established the Lily Greenham Archive, the Hugh Davies Collection, and the Longplayer Archive in Special Collections at Goldsmiths, University of London. Bulley is a trustee of Longplayer.

Contact

If you’d like to be in touch to discuss commissions or for further information about any of the work on this website, please email: contact@jamesbulley.com or use the form below.