HECTOR MACINNES
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Hello. I'm Hector MacInnes, I'm a sound artist. I have a socially engaged practice, and I make things and undertake artistic research using audio, print, spoken word, installation and organising things, often in collaboration with other artists and a diverse range of communities. Having been born and grown up on the Isle of Skye, my projects are deeply rooted in an ongoing interrogation of belonging, identity, legitimacy and lived experience of the more-than-urban.
I am also working towards a PhD at CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice) at UAL, where I am doing practice-based research around the concept of the field, anthropocene rurality, stags, wind, and the New Weird.
I hold an MA in Sound Arts from Bath Spa University (2020) and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Glasgow (2003)
| [ Skaftfell Residency 2025 ] - Seyðisfjörður, Iceland |
| With Philippa C Thomas and Ellar Gwyn MacInnes. From April to June 2025, my partner and I, and our 3yo son, are based at Skaftfell Centre for Visual Arts in east Iceland. We are interrogating both the place of children in landscapes that are often deemed hostile to human settlement, and the hostility of artistic infrastructures (such as residencies) to those with childcare responsibilities. Undertaken with generous support from Arts Council England |
| [ T O L L ] - Highland Region, Scotland |
| With Cat Meighan, Sinéad Hargan, David Snoo Wilson, Daniel Freyne and Mike Webster. A radical archive of statements, stories, wishes, memories, exclamations and demands from Highlanders impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and its legacies since 2020. The archive was submitted by communities and individuals across the Highlands of Scotland, and each contribution inscribed onto a hand-bell: to be rung each time it is needed – collectively and apart, now and in the future. |
| [ We Have Questions ] - Cromarty, Scotland |
| With Cat Meighan. We Have Questions is an annual two day, artist-led working group exploring contemporary rurality. Cat and I devised the first event in 2023 as the summation of our residencies with the Highland Culture Collective, and since then have hosted 25 practitioners exploring issues ranging from artist-led risk assessment, queer-mapping the Highlands, refugee perspectives on rurality and the colonial positionality of our host location in Cromarty. |
| 2025 - [ Fulfilment Centre ] - Unfolding Narratives, London College of Communication, England |
| A sound and photography installation exploring places of contested habitation, and rurality's position within the wellness-industrial complex. |
| 2025 - [ Noise! Impact! Assessment! ] - Radiophrenia, FM in Glasgow, and Online. |
| A 15 minute fixed-media audio work, proposing the chaotic physicality of the wind on the west coast of Scotland as a transversal research methodology. Part of a series of practice and written works responding to the Glen Ullinish II windfarm planning application on the Isle of Skye by Muirhall Energy. |
| 2025 - [ This Fantasy Must End! ] - Isle of Skye, Scotland |
| With Aqsa Arif for Lux Scotland and Atlas Arts. An iteration of the artists' moving image programme Intentional Pauses and Unforeseen Gaps, for which we curated a programme of film and audio, and led a workshop on "Walking The Fiction". |
| 2024 - [ Voice Over ] - Studio Practice |
| A research and reflection project funded by Creative Scotland, exploring the way the voice is deployed, recorded and inflected across different media in the course of socially engaged arts work. |
| 2023 - [ The Disobedient Choir ] - Lyth Arts Centre, Caithness & Purton, Gloucestershire |
| With Sinéad Hargan. An ephemeral choir, based in The Bare Project's "People's Palace of Possibility", which materialised in Lyth, Caithness during July and August 2023. Across three short rehearsals, diffused online, choir members used their voices to explore the way they respond to instruction, authority and belonging in the context of utopian fantasies. |
| 2023 - [ Dualchas ] - La Biennale Architettura, Venice |
| Quadraphonic sound work as part of an audiovisual installation which tells a story of architecture, situatedness, landscape and language in the West Highlands and Islands. Part of Dangerous Liaisons at La Biennale Architettura in Venice. Created with film-maker Peter Marsden and writer Cal Flyn. |
| 2023 - [ Highland Memory Space ] - Highland Region, Scotland |
| Artist led research and consultation into community
responses to the pandemic and its legacies in Highland
region. Together with Sinéad Hargan and Cat Meighan, we
led sessions focusing on sense-memories of the pandemic,
to work towards concepts for a memorial or other response
in the public art sphere. You can download our report [HERE] |
| 2021 - 2023 - [ Pfft Ensemble ] - HMP Inverness, Scotland |
| A nebulous improvisers' ensemble using iPads, touchOSC
and MAX. Co-designed with inmates of HMP Inverness and
community groups, using a circular test-and-learn
approach. Part of my work with the Highland Culture Colective. You can read a conversation between myself and Arusa Qureshi about my prison work [HERE], and watch a panel discussion I took part in on the amplification of minoritised voices [HERE] |
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| 2022 - 2023 - [ The Listening Room ] - Isle of Skye, Scotland |
| An exploration of identity, voice and belonging in a
mental health setting, through collective listening
practices and radio-making. Part of my work with the Highland Culture Colective. |
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| 2022 - [ Attend ] - Creative Academy, Inverness, Scotland |
| With Cat Meighan. A series of workshops and talks, sharing of co-created work, and reflection on the meaning of our socially engaged practice. Part of the Highland Culture Colective, during which Cat and I worked on intersecting themes around criminal justice, mental health and sexual violence against women. |
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| 2022 - [ Lespie Winnachie's Loom ] - Online |
| Re-sounding a story of chaos and order, wildlife and weaving from the Tobar An Dualchais archive, created for the Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme's 'Storytagging' project. |
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| 2021 - 2023 [ Changing Realities ] - University of York, England |
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| Ongoing work with social security researchers at the Universities of York, Birmingham and Salford, recording and
disseminating the lived experiences of parents and carers on low
incomes, first during the covid pandemic, and now during
the cost of living crisis. |
| 2021 - [ Kiosk ] - Stornoway, Scotland |
| A group exhibition of speculative souvenirs at An
Lanntair in Stornoway, built on the myth of the Bùth
MhicNeacail (Nicolson's Kiosk). The exhibition was
co-curated by Philippa C Thomas and myself and featured
artists & makers from across Scotland. |
| 2018 - [ Inner Architecture ] |
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| A response to the 1962 Pure Maths Exam, commissioned by
the National Library of Scotland for "Re-Sits",
celebrating the digitisation of their exam archive.
Created in collaboration with singers from across the Isle
of Skye, the piece is an exploration of the circular ruins
of Dùn Beag - a stone age broch - as a site of maths,
music and indeterminacy. Meeting within its walls over the
course of 6 weeks, we played with distribution of harmony,
chanting, binary counting and improvisation to see what
might emerge from the questions in the exam. |
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| 2017 - [ Suspension and Disbelief ] |
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| The imaginary history of the Hebridean Cable Transit
Company, retold in two exhibitions by Philippa C Thomas
and I. The first of these celebrated the company's 1950's
heyday and featured the complete restoration of gondola
#72 ("Effie"), the second explored the hubris and
submarine adventure that led to its demise in the Sound
of Harris. |
| 2016 - [ The Informants ] |
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| As adults we often make sweeping predictions ourselves
and our world, when the people who live in those futures
are already here among us, albeit in child form. The
Informants presents edited and anonymised interview
content which is, in a playful way, an attempt to get them
to “report back” on what those futures are like. This
project had two iterations, one for the In Cahoots
conference at Sound Festival Aberdeen, and one for Atlas
Arts' "Travelling The Archive". |
| 2014 - [ The Replica Hearth ] |
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| A collaborative project with Kate McMorrine, exploring
the story of 'Eoghann the Yeti', a crofter who
mysteriously vanished into woodland on the Isle of Skye in
1984. The work centres around a reconstruction of
Eoghann's living room inside a shipping container, and a
museum/gift shop housing an exhaustive collection of
speculative academia. The exhibition was a journey through
his personal life and the contemporary history of his
community, but beneath it were clues to something more
sublime and unharnessed. |
| 2013 - [ Story's End ] |
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| Created with The Dead Man's Waltz, Story's End was a
collective performance exploring the role of death in
narrative. It involved film-maker Johnny Barrington,
visual artists Kate McMorrine, Cat Ingall and Mark
Weallans, and author/performer Hal Duncan. It was perormed
in different guises at the Glasgow Short Film Festival,
Death: A Festival For The Living at the Southbank Centre,
and as part of the Made In Scotland showcase at the
Edinburgh Fringe. |
| 2013 - [ Spin Cycle ] |
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| A multi-artist performance led by David Littler and
Jason Singh (Sampler/Cultureclash), with Anne Martin and
Deirdre Nelson, exploring circular movement through sound,
music, textiles and folk tales. Performed at Skye Bike
Fest and Cecil Sharpe House in Camden. |
section coming late 2025
email: hec dot macinnes at gmail dot com
tel: 07747148465
insta: @hectormacinnes