Zoë Irvine b. Aberdeen 1972
Zoë is an artist and sound designer. As an artist she primarily working with sound, exploring voice, conversation, sound recording and the relationship between sound and image. Her artworks range from carefully crafted individual pieces for broadcast and installation, to participative events.

Her large scale works include 900 Voices created in collaboration with Lindsay Perth and Jules Rawlinson. 900 Voices was a participative project which lead towards a sound installation in St Giles’ Cathedral Edinburgh. It was been commissioned as part of St Giles’ momentous 900th anniversary celebrations and launched in August 2024 as part of Edinburgh’s International Festival.

This Evening’s Performance Has Not Been Cancelled (2020), an operatic call centre created in lockdown. This Evening’s Performance connected audiences to 9 European opera companies who’s performances had been cancelled or postponed, live, in conversation, by phone. This work was later documented in her radio short doc The Lockdown Oratorio of a Call Centre Operator (2022) commissioned by Lux Scotland/ BBC Now and Next programme.

DIAL-A-DIVA, a global 24 hour live phonecast concert experienced by phone that took place in 2005 & 2007, and Magnetic Migration Music a suite of works over a 10 year period exploring found cassette tapes from all over the world (actively collecting tape 1998 – 2008).
From 2013 – 2015 Irvine was artist in residence at the Scottish Parliament, collaborating with composer Pippa Murphy.

Alongside her own work, Zoë Irvine and Pernille Spence began collaborating as IRVINE & SPENCE in 2015 and continue to do so. Their work is a synthesis of ideas, methods and mediums from their individual practices in sound, performance and film. Their process is one of experimentation, close observation and audio-visual composition. Their most recent film piece Getting OK With Not Being OK That Things are not OK won the De Varti prize for funniest film at the Anne Arbor Film Festival 2024.

See IRVINE & SPENCE Instagram at @IRVINE_SPENCE_SPACE.

As a freelance sound designer Irvine’s work spans artist’s films, experimental radio, documentaries and dramas, shorts and features.

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Zoë is lecturer and researcher in Sound for Film at Edinburgh Napier/ Screen Academy Scotland.
She brings her experience as a creative freelance sound designer into her teaching.
Her current area of academic research focuses on oral history and other vocal recordings in archival collections and how archival recordings can be accessed and experienced through sound art practices.
Uni mail: z.irvine@napier.ac.uk

INSTA: @soundslikezoe