Joanne Scott

Photo courtesy of Ludovic des Cognets

Dr Jo Scott (she/her) is an artist-researcher and educator. Jo’s research is conducted through a variety of creative practices including performance, installation, sound walks and sonic experiences. She holds a practice-based PhD in intermedial performance-making and has worked on more than 20 artistic research projects. More recently, Jo has focused her artistic research on explorations of our relationships with landscapes, wildness and the more-than-human world. She has taught in UK Higher Education for the past 12 years and is a scholar of digital performance, a field in which she has published widely.

Jo’s current research is exploring the use of sited sonic practices such as sound walks, instructional works and sonic scores to explore human relationships with changing, disturbed and damaged landscapes. This research is particularly interested in the relationships we form with the more than human world, the value we place on our companion species and how creative digital practices can reveal our close entanglements with these species. Using a creative multispecies methodology, Jo is experimenting with the use of sited sonic practices to foster different modes of attentiveness, curiosity about and interaction with our more-than-human kin and the landscapes which we all inhabit.

Photo courtesy of Ludovic des Cognets

A particular focus for this research is ‘anthropogenic’ landscapes, which are shaped and disturbed by human actions and those that are changing due to the effects of the climate crisis, in the form of a warming planet, more extreme weather events, biodiversity and habitat loss. Jo has a long-running interest in using textured digital mixes to form sited sonic experiences, combining looped vocal refrains, texts, digital sounds and field recordings to prompt renewed ways of engaging with and being in familiar places.

Two current projects are a sound walk exploring the colonial legacies of plant-human relationships and a creative auto-ethnographic study, using sound mixes to explore the central Portuguese forest during the summer fire season.

Alongside this, Jo is a scholar of intermedial and digital performance. In this area, she is currently researching and writing about different modes of extended reality (XR) performance, and their use of immersive technologies to create live experiences. A co-edited book on this topic is due out in 2025.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Jo is a leading expert in artistic and practice research. She co-convened the Practice as Research Centre of Excellence at the University of Salford for 7 years, has supervised and examined a range of practice research doctoral projects and has been invited to speak about practice research to researchers at a range of institutions including De Montfort University, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Essex University and the University of Kent. She is also the associate editor of the International Journal of Performing Arts and Digital Media and is currently co-editing a new collection about extended reality performance, due out in late 2024 or early 2025.

Find out more at www.joanneemmascott.com